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FREEMAN,  EDWARD  A.  SOME  IMPRESSIONS 
OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.  By  EDWARD  A.  FREE 
MAN.  New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1883.  i2mo, 
pp.  xii,  292. 

SOME  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES.  By  EDWARD  A.  FREEMAN.  New 
York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1883.  i2mo, pp.  xii,  292. 

UNITED  STATES.  SOME  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES.  By  EDWARD  A.  FREEMAN, 
New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1883,  i2mo,  pp.  xii, 
292. 


BY   THE    SAME   AUTHOR. 

GENERAL  SKETCH  OF  HISTORY. 


New  Edition,  Revised,  with  Chrono 
logical  Table,  Maps  and  Index.  16mo. 
Cloth,  $1.40. 


SOME    IMPRESSIONS 


OF   THE 


UNITED   STATES 


EDWARD    A.   FREEMAN,   D.C.L.,   LL  D. 

HONORARY  FELLOW  OF  TRINITY  COLLEGE,   OXFORD 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY    HOLT    AND    COMPANY 


AUTHOR'S   EDITION. 


PREFACE. 


THIS  small  book  is  founded  on  four  articles 
which  have  appeared  in  the  "  Fortnightly  Ee- 
view"  for  August  and  September  1882  and  in 
''Longman's  Magazine"  for  November  1882  and 
January  1883.  The  substance  of  those  articles  is 
here,  together  with  an  amount  of  new  matter 
at  least  as  large  as  the  articles  themselves.  They 
represent  observations  made  in  the  United  States 
during  a  stay  which  lasted  from  October  1881 
to  April  1882.  In  the  course  of  that  stay  I 
saw  something  of  most  of  the  chief  Northern 
States;  but  I  did  not  get  further  west  than 
St.  Louis,  or  further  south  than  the  northern 
part  of  Virginia.  The  "  impressions"  are  of  course 
those  of  one  who  looks  at  things  for  his  own 
purposes  and  from  his  own  point  of  view.  I 
have,  I  hope,  never  forgotten  that  there  are  many 


iv  PREFACE. 

other  points  of  view  from  which  the  same  things 
may  be  looked  at.  But  I  believe  that  each  man 
does  best  by  keeping  to  his  own  line,  and  not 
meddling  with  inquiries  foreign  to  that  line  and 
in  which  he  would  most  likely  go  wrong. 

SOMERLEAZE,     WELLS: 

February  16,  1883. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Difference  between  old  and  new  countries;  closer  con 
nexion  of  past  and  present  in  the  new 2-4 

New  things  and  old  in  America 5 

American  interest  in  British  opinion;  its  working  in 

different  ways 6-9 

Tendency  to  imagine  slights 8 

Likeness  and  unltkeness;  points  of  unlikeness  strike 

most  where  there  is  general  likeness 9 

America  less  different  from  England  than  Scotland  is, 

and  why 10,  11 

America  and  Ireland. 12-14 

The  author's  own  position 15, 16 

Unity  of  the  English  folk 16, 17 

Reception  of  the  doctrine  in  America 16-20 

The  word  "  foreign" 18, 19 

Effects  of  old  grudges 20-23 

Effects  of  the  existence  of  dependent  colonies 23,  24 

Analogy  with  old  Greece 24,  25 

The  word  "  Anglo-Saxon" 25,  26 

The  word  "  American;"  its  use  by  Wesley 27 

"  English"  and  "  British" 27-29 

1 '  Briton"  and  ' '  Britisher" 29 

Two  uses  of  the  word  ' '  American" 30-32 

Need  of  a  name  for  the  United  Stales;  "  Fredonia" ...  32,  33 

Foreign  infusions  in  the  United  States 34-36 


vi  CONTENTS. 

The  old  Dutch  and  French  settlements ;  analogy  with 

Romance  Switzerland 36-38 

Suggested  order  of  travelling. 40,  41 

Mutual  ignorance  in  England  and  America 42-44 

Forgetf ulness  of  past  history 44 

Defects  in  teaching;  American  ignorance  of  English 

geography 45.47 

The  English  settlements  in  Britain  and  in  America. . .  48,  49 

"  Americanisms"  and  "  Scotticisms"  in  language 50-53 

Opposite  tendencies  in  colonies,  to  go  on  and  to  stand 

still 53-55 

Conservative  elements  in  the  United  States 54 

Scottish  English  strictly  a  dialect 55 

Dialect  and  local  usage 55-58 

No  strictly  American  dialect;  dialects  in  America. ...  55,  56 

Railway  language 58-61 

Other  cases  of  local  usage;  store,  shop,  &c 62-65 

Local  usage  to  be  kept 65,  66 

Slang,  philosophical  and  vulgar 67-70 

Use  of  technical  words 69-71 

Local  nomenclature 71-78 

Older  American  names 72-75 

Modern  American  names;  pseudo-classical  names  ....  75-77 

American  pronunciation 78,  79 

"  Clerk,"  &c 80-84 

"Zed"  or  "zee" 84,85 

"  Intonation"  or  '•'  twang" 85-87 

American  spelling 87-89 

General  character  of  "  Americanisms" 90,  91 

American  law  and  lawyers;  identity  of  English  and 

American  law 91-96 

American  courts  and  judges 93-95 


CONTENTS.  *     vii 

PAGE 

Trial  of  Guiteau. 96-98 

Local  administration ;  the  Justice  of  the  Peace 98-100 

Outrages  against  law;  case  of  Sergeant  Mason 102, 103 

Causes  of  such  outrages;  the  true  democratic  stan 
dard  ;  weakness  of  administration  in  America. . .  103-107 

An  insurrection  and  a  civil  war 107, 108 

Political  Parties:  Kepublicans  and  Democrats 108-110 

Necessity  of  the  Federal  System;  State  "sovereignty"  111-113 
"Federal"  and  "National";  "Ministry"  and  "Go 
vernment" 114, 115 

System  of  Two  Chambers;  origin  and  character  of 

the  American  Senate 116, 117 

The  Senate  and  the  House 118 

The  State  Legislatures;  "dead-lock"  at  Albany  in 

1882 119, 120 

The  Governor 121-123 

Powers  vested  in  single  persons;  Judges;  Mayors. . .  123, 124 
Corruption ;  the  "spoils"  system ;  character  of  Garfield  124-126 
Use  of  the  word  "  politics;"  tendency  to  assume  cor 
ruption  127 

Bribery  and  fraudulent  returns 128, 129 

A  municipal  election  at  Philadelphia 129-131 

Position  of  the  American  cities 132 

"City"  and  "town" ;  the  New  England  town-meeting  133,  134 
Comparison  of  the  English  and  American  constitu 
tion  ;  absence  of  hereditary  tendencies  in  America  1 34-137 

Foreign  elements  in  America 138 

The  Irish 139,  140 

The  Irish  vote 141, 142 

The  Negro;  his  position  a  new  problem 143-145 

Question  of  negro  citizenship 146-148 

Position  of  the  blacks,  North  and  South 148,  149 


viii    *  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Differences  among  the  blacks 149, 150 

The  Indians 151-153 

The  Chinese  Question;  analogy  of  Chinese  and  Jews  153-157 

British  subjects  of  barbarian  race 157 

Hasty  bestowal  of  citizenship ;  comparison  of  older 

commonwealths 158, 159 

Ecclesiastical  matters;   equality  of  all  sects;    older 

and  newer  churches 159-161 

"  Church"  and  "  Meeting  House" 162, 163 

Arrangement  of  churches ;  the  old  church  at  Newport  164-166 

Talking  in  church 167 

The  American  Prayer-book 167-169 

Extempore  prayer 169, 170 

Negro  churches 171-173 

A  fashionable  church;  use  of  the  word  Lent 173,  174 

Position  of  the  clergy 174, 175 

Church  and   State;  ecclesiastical  causes   and   civil 

courts 176-179 

Universities  and  Colleges;  their  number;  position  of 

the  smaller  colleges 179-181 

Neglect  of  original  authorities 182-188 

Readers  in  Germany,  England,  and  America 184,  185 

German  books  and  periodicals 187 

Harvard  and  Yale 188, 189 

Cornell 189 

The  female  colleges;  Vassar  and  Wellesley 189, 190 

Personal  munificence  in  America;  foundation  of  col 
leges;  strange  restrictions 190,  191 

Dominant  theology  in  different  colleges 191,  192 

The  English  collegiate  system  unknown  in  America  192,  193 

Title  of  President 193 

College  forms  and  phrases 194, 195 


CONTENTS.  jx 


PAGE 

The  commencement;  lack  of  academic  dress 195, 195 

Study  of  local  history  and  institutions;  new  school 
of  American  scholarship;  Johns  Hopkins  Uni 
versity,  Baltimore 196-199 

Position  of  American  institutions  in  general  history    199,  200 

"Society" 200,201 

Lack  of  political  talk ;  its  causes 202,  203 

Absence  of  public  ceremony 204,  205 

Ceremoniousness  in  private  life;  modes  of  address. .     205-208 

Fondness  for  titles 208-210 

Comparison  with  England  and  Germany 209,  210 

Feeling  as  to  precedence 211 

Love  of  town-life 212-214 

Many  centres  in  America 214-217 

Position  of  New  York 216,  217 

Real  importance  of  the  country  element 217,  218 

Comparison  with  England,  France,  and  Germany. .     218-220 

Old  American  towns;  Bristol  and  Farmington 221-223 

Rural  life  in  Virginia 224,  225 

Lack  of  wild  animals 225,  226 

Roads  and  post-offices 227-229 

Hackney-carriages 229-231 

American  travelling;  size  of  the  States;  States  and 

counties 231-234 

Political  effect  of  modern  inventions 235,  236 

American  railroads  and  hotels 236-238 

Hotel  life  in  America 238,  239 

Aspect  of  the  country;  lack  of  antiquities 240-242 

The  American  in  Europe 242, 243 

American  cities;  position  of  Albany 244,  245 

Question  of  American  architecture;  the  capitol  at 

Albany;  hope  of  a  national  style 246-249 


X  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

New  York  State  and  New  York  City 249-251 

American  newspapers;  fondness  for  personal  gossip  251-254 

English  and  American  papers 254-257 

Weekly  and  daily  papers 258,  259 

Personal  experiences  of  the  American  press 259-263 

Interviewing 263-267 

Remembrances  of  the  Civil  War;  canonization  of 

Lincoln 268 

Special  national  touchiness 269 

Charge  of  scornful  ridicule 269,  270 

Position  of  North  and  South;  case  of  secession 271-273 

The  British  and  the  American  point  of  view 274-279 

Use  of  the  words  Federal  and  Confederate;  fallacies 

on  the  Southern  side 279-281 

Claim  of  "  originality" ^  282-284 

Use  of  the  word  "disruption" 284-286 

Memories  of  the  war 286-288 

A  tale  of  both  hemispheres 289,  290 

Conclusion..  290-292 


SOME    IMPRESSIONS 


OF   THE 


UNITED   STATES. 


SOME   IMPEESSIONS 


THE  UNITED   STATES. 


i. 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  say  something  as  to  the 
impressions  left  on  my  mind  by  my  late  visit  to 
the  United  States.  This  is  a  work  which  I  should 
hardly  have  undertaken  of  my  own  choice.  But 
it  seemed  to  be  gradually  laid  upon  me  by  force 
of  circumstances.  He  who  visits  Britain  from 
America,  he  who  visits  America  from  Britain, 
seems  bound,  if  he  be  at  all  in  the  habit  of  using 
the  pen,  to  use  it  forthwith  to  set  down  all  or  some 
of  his  impressions  of  the  kindred  land  and  its  peo 
ple.  The  thing  seems  to  have  taken  its  place  as 
a  formal  duty  which  cannot  be  escaped.  For  my 
own  part  I  had  hoped  to  escape  it.  I  was  so  well 
treated  in  America  that  it  really  seemed  unthank 
ful,  almost  uncivil,  for  me  to  write  anything  about 
America.  Yet,  while  I  was  there,  I  was  asked 


$  •  S£fcl*£888IQm  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

over  and  over  again,  whether  I  meant  to  write  a 
book  about  America,  All  thought  of  writing  a 
book  I  could  then  honestly  disclaim.  It  was  only 
gradually  that  the  necessity  even  of  writing  some 
thing  less  than  a  book  forced  itself  upon  me.  The 
thought  of  a  book  I  still  disclaimed  long  after  I 
had  found  myself  in  print  on  the  subject.  But  as 
the  detached  papers  were  laid  upon  me  by  circum 
stances,  so  at  a  later  stage  the  graver  duty  was  hud 
upon  me.  And  I,  who  wished  at  first  to  escape 
from  making  even  an  article,  now  find  myself  mak 
ing  a  book. 

I  still  regret  the  necessity;  for  I  feel  that  any 
picture  that  I  can  draw  of  American  things  must 
necessarily  be  an  imperfect  one,  much  more  im 
perfect  than  the  picture  which  I  might  draw  of 
any  European  land.  For  there  are  many  aspects 
of  any  country,  but  above  all  of  a  young  country, 
of  which  I  am  quite  unfit  to  judge,  and  at  which 
indeed  I  was  not  likely  to  look  at  all.  And  this 
necessary  imperfection  is  a  worse  fault  in  a  young 
country  than  it  is  in  an  old  one.  In  a  young  coun 
try  everything  is  affected  by  the  fact  of  youth,  in 
a  way  in  which  things  in  an  old  country  are  not 
always  affected  by  the  fact  of  age.  It  is  always 
better,  if  possible,  to  make  present  and  past  illus 
trate  one  another;  still  in  an  old  country  it  is  often 


OLD  AND  NEW  COUNTRIES.  3 

easy,  from  some  points  of  view,  to  treat  of  the  pre 
sent  with  very  little  reference  to  the  past,  and  of 
the  past  with  very  little  reference  to  the  present. 
But  in  a  young  country  the  nearness  of  even  the 
remotest  past  has  a  direct  influence  on  the  present. 
Everything  seems  to  be  young  together,  while  in 
an  old  country  some  things  are  old  and  some  young. 
This  air  of  newness  in  the  United  States  is  often,  as 
I  hope  presently  to  show,  only  an  air ;  but  the  air 
of  seeming  newness  practically  affects  everything. 
It  seems  to  bring  different  classes  of  things  more 
nearly  to  a  level  than  they  are  in  an  old  country. 
It  is  not  so  easy  as  it  is  in  an  old  country  to  keep 
things  apart  from  each  other.  And  unluckily  there 
are  a  great  many  aspects  of  present  life,  aspects 
which  are  specially  prominent  in  American  life, 
which  for  me  have  no  interest  whatever.  Political 
and  judicial  assemblies  have  for  me  the  same  inte 
rest  in  young  America  which  they  have  in  old 
Greece.  But,  greatly  to  my  ill-luck,  I  am  wholly 
ignorant  of  all  things  bearing  on  commerce,  manu 
factures,  or  agriculture.  Nor  am  I  better  skilled 
in  matters  bearing  on  education,  unless  it  be  educa 
tion  which  rises  to  the  level  of  a  college  or  univer 
sity.  Now  I  can  pass  through  an  old  country,  say 
Italy  or  Dalmatia,  and  I  can  find  a  great  deal  to 
notice  and  to  record  without  meddling  with  any  of 


4       IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

the  tilings  of  which  I  am  ignorant.  In  America  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  avoid  them.  Happily  my 
American  friends  were  merciful.  I  was  taken  to 
see  a  good  many  schools ;  for  some  people,  I  know 
not  why,  seemed  to  think  that  I  had  something  to 
do  with  schools,  or  at  least  that  I  took  so'me  special 
interest  in  schools.  But  I  was  spared  the  more 
fearful  grind  of  going  through  factories,  prisons, 
hospitals,  with  all  the  weariness  of  an  inexpert. 

It  follows  therefore  at  once  that  any  remarks 
of  mine  on  American  matters  must  be  very  im 
perfect,  and  further  that  such  imperfection  is  a 
much  greater  fault  in  the  case  of  America  than  it 
might  be  in  the  case  of  some  other  lands.  But 
beyond  this,  I  take  up  my  pen  with  a  dread  that 
anything  that  I  can  say  of  the  United  States  and 
their  people  will  be  frightfully  one-sided.  It  is 
not  easy  to  write  quite  impartially  of  a  land  in 
which  a  man  has  received  so  cordial  a  welcome 
and  such  constant  and  unmixed  kindness  as  I 
received  in  America.  One  has  a  feeling  that  it  is 
ungrateful,  almost  unfair,  to  write  anything  but 
unmixed  praise;  and  yet  unmixed  praise,  either 
in  America  or  anywhere  else,  must  be  unfair, 
because  it  must  be  untruthful.  And  I  feel  too 
that  I  personally  can  have  seen  only  some  #f  the 
brightest  sides  of  the  country  and  its  people.  The 


OLD  AND  NEW  ELEMENTS.  5 

whole  nation  cannot  be  as  good  as  the  people  who 
have  been  so  good  to  me.     I  was  naturally  thrown 
mainly  among  men  whose  thoughts   and  pursuits 
had  some  kind  of  likeness   to   my   own.     I  lived 
chiefly  with   professors,    lawyers,    a   sprinkling  of 
statesmen,  men    of   thought    and    information  of 
various   kinds.     Of  the   pushing,  meddling,  ques 
tioning  American,  described  in  so  many  stories  and 
caricatures,  I   have   seen  nothing,  at  least  not  on 
American  soil.     It  is  therefore  somewhat  hard  for 
me  to  write  about  American  matters  at  all.     But  I 
think  that  cultivated  and  sensible  people  in  Ame 
rica,  such  as   those   among  whom  I  spent  most  of 
my  time  when  I   was  there,  are  not  likely  to  be 
offended  with  anything  that  I  am  likely  to  say.     I 
trust  at  least  that  they  will  not  be  displeased  with 
a  certain  general   doctrine  which  I  have  to  main 
tain,  and  at  which  I  have  already  hinted.     This  is 
that  the   seeming  newness   of   everything   in   the 
United  States  is  very  superficial,  and  that  there  is 
a  large  kernel  of  what  is  old  within.     If  a  formula 
is  wanted,  I  would  put  it  in  this  shape.     There  are 
many  things  in  the  United  States  which  are  new, 
very  new,  palpably  new  at  first  sight.     But  when  a 
thing  is  not  thus  palpably  new  it  is  commonly  quite 
as  old  as  the  thing  that  answers  to  it  in  England, 
and  very  often  much  older. 


6       IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

II. 

"What  do  you  think  of  our  country?"  is  the 
question  traditionally  put  into  the  mouth  of  the 
American  addressing  his  British  visitor.  And  the 
British  visitor  in  real  life  finds  that  he  very  often 
•has  to  answer  that  question  or  its  equivalent.  In 
its  naked  shape  it  is  not  often  put  by  the  very 
best  people,  and,  whenever  it  is  put  by  any  one, 
the  question  is  a  little  embarrassing.  It  is  not  a 
question  that  one  can  answer  offhand  in  words  of 
one  syllable.  I  have  sometimes  tried  to  turn  it 
off  by  answering  that  their  country  was  very  big, 
a  statement  which  is  surely  colourless  and  which 
cannot  be  denied  by  people  of  any  way  of  thinking. 
Or  I  have  tried  to  parry  it  by  asking  whether 
they  meant  the  whole  Union  or  their  own  particu 
lar  State  or  neighbourhood."  But  even  when  one 
is  not  questioned  quite  so  nakedly,  it  is  easy  to 
see  an  intense  desire  on  the  part  of  the  American 
host  to  know  how  everything  about  him  looks  in 
the  eyes  of  the  British  guest.  Such  a  desire  is 
indeed  almost  inherent  in  the  relation  of  host  and 
guest  everywhere ;  but  it  seems  to  be  stronger 
than  elsewhere,  it  certainly  is  more  openly  and 
pressingly  revealed  than  elsewhere,  when  the  host 
is  American  and  the  guest  British.  That  so  it 


INTERESTS  IN  BRITISH  OPINION.  7 

should  be  is  neither  wonderful  nor  blameable.    It 
is  only  in  the  nature  of  things  that  every  American 
should,  in  his  heart,  deem   British   opinion    more 
important  than  any  other,  and  should  in  his  heart 
value  British  good  opinion  more  fondly  than  any 
other.     A  young  nation,  honestly  conscious  of  its 
own  greatness  in  many  ways,  but  conscious  at  the 
same  time  that  it  has  been  often  unfairly  censured, 
often  misunderstood,  is  sure  to  be  keenly  sensitive 
to  the  opinion  of  other  nations,  and  above  all  of 
the  nation  which  in  its  heart  it  feels  to  be  its  own 
parent.      The  very  tone  of   boasting   and   bluster 
towards  Europe   and  England  which  is  sometimes 
put  on  by  some  classes  of  American  writers  and 
speakers  is  really  a  witness  to  this  feeling.     Ame 
rican  dislike  towards  England— when   it   is   really 
felt  and  not  put  on  simply  to  catch  Irish  votes- 
is  something  quite  different  from  certain  forms  of 
national  ill-feeling  to  which  we  are  used  at  home. 
It   is  unlike   either    the    old-fashioned    dislike    to 
France   or  the   new-fashioned    dislike    to    Russia. 
In  this  last  kind  of  dislike  there  is  mingled  a  cer 
tain  feeling  of  contempt,  of  very  unjust  contempt 
in  both  cases,  but  still  of  genuine  contempt.     It  is 
the  dislike  which  springs  from  old-standing  national 
self-sufficiency,  a  dislike  which  is  quite  free  from 
touchiness  or  inquisitiveness  ;  no  British  character- 


8       IMPRESSIONS  OF  TEE  UNITED  STATES. 

istic  is  more  marked  than  our  utter  and  often  most 
foolish  heedlessness  of  the  opinion  of  other  nations. 
This  is  the  natural  weakness  of  an  old  nation,  above 
all  of  an  insular  nation.  The  natural  weakness  of 
a  young  nation  is  the  exact  opposite.  Such  a 
nation  must  be  conscious  ;  it  must  be  touchy  ;  it 
must  be  inquisitive.  It  cannot  help  caring  for  the 
opinion  of  other  nations,  above  all  for  the  opinion 
of  its  own  ancient  mother-land.  And  if  such  a 
nation,  truly  or  untruly,  fancies  itself  slighted,  mis 
represented,  misunderstood,  if  it  fails  to  meet  with 
sympathy  where  it  seeks  for  sympathy,  the  result 
may  easily  be  a  dislike  which  is  possibly  real,  a 
contempt  which  is  certainly  artificial.  This  innate 
yearning,  often  unavowed,  sometimes  perhaps  un 
conscious,  for  European,  above  all  for  British,  good 
opinion  often  shows  itself  in  odd  ways.  One  form 
of  it  is  the  tendency  in  some  Americans,  chiefly 
perhaps  in  some  American  newspapers — a  tendency 
which  to  us  seems  so  strange — to  conjure  up  slights 
where  nothing  like  a  slight  has  been  meant.  This 
form  of  interest  is  unpleasant,  but  it  is  not  at  all 
unnatural.  The  honest  desire  to  know  what  the 
stranger,  above  all  what  the  British  stranger,  thinks 
is  another  and  a  better  side  of  the  same  feeling.  It 
may  sometimes  get  a  little  ludicrous  and  a  little 
wearisome ;  but  in  moderation  it  is  perfectly  right 


LIKENESSES  AND    UNLIKENESSES.  9 

and  healthy.  And  with  the  highest  class  of  Ameri 
cans — those  who  do  not  put  their  questions  in  quite 
so  naked  a  shape,  those  who  are  keen-sighted  enough 
to  understand  and  candid  enough  to  avow  that  there 
may  be  a  balance  of  merit  and  defect  either  way— 
the  discussion  of  things  on  the  older  and  the  newer 
side  of  Ocean  often  leads  to  comparisons,  and  the 
comparisons  often  lead  to  investigations,  which 
are  interesting  and  instructive  in  the  highest 
degree. 

Now  comparisons  and  investigations  of  this  kind 
come  most  naturally  when  there  is  a  strong  essential 
likeness  between  the  things  compared.  It  is  in 
such  cases,  not  in  those  where  the  things  compared 
are  altogether  unlike  one  another,  that  we  note  the 
minutest  differences.  It  is  where  things  are  very 
much  alike  that  we  most  diligently  mark  the  points 
in  which  they  are  not  alike.  Take  for  instance  the 
two  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  The 
main  features  in  the  constitution  and  customs  of 
the  two  are  so  closely  alike  to  one  another,  and  so 
utterly  unlike  those  of  any  other  universities  in  the 
world,  that  there  is  a  certain  curious  pleasure  in 
tracing  out  the  endless  minute  points  in  which  they 
differ.  So  it  is  between  England  and  America.  It 
is  the  essential  likeness  which  makes  us  note  every 
point  of  unlikeness.  I  hardly  know  whether  my 


10     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

American  friends  were  pleased  or  disappointed — 
they  certainly  were  sometimes  a  little  surprised — 
at  my  telling  them,  as  I  often  had  to  do,  that  what 
most  struck  me  in  their  country  was  how  little  it 
differed  from  my  own.  I  had  to  say  over  and  over 
again  that  this  was  the  thing  which  had  most  sur 
prised  me,  but  that  on  second  thoughts  it  did  not 
surprise  me  at  all,  as  it  was  only  what  was  perfectly 
natural.  To  me  most  certainly  the  United  States 
did  not  seem  a  foreign  country ;  it  was  simply 
England  with  a  difference.  The  difference  struck 
me  as  certainly  greater  than  the  greatest  difference 
which  had  ever  struck  me  between  one  part  of 
England  and  another,  but  as  certainly  less  than  the 
difference  which  strikes  me  when  I  enter  Scotland. 
That  America  should  seem  less  strange  than  Scot 
land  is  doubtless  partly  owing  to  the  fact  that  Eng 
lish  and  Scottish  law  are  two  things  which  stand 
wholly  apart,  while  the  law  of  the  American  States 
is  for  the  most  part  simply  English  law  with  a 
difference.  All  things  therefore  which  depend  on 
the  administration  of  the  law — and  the  things  which 
depend  on  the  administration  of  the  law  make  up  a 
good  part  of  ordinary  life — are  different  between 
England  and  Scotland,  while  they  are  largely  the 
same  between  England  and  America.  A  crowd  of 
names,  offices,  formulae,  modes  of  proceeding,  are 


AMERICA  AND  SCOTLAND.  H 

very  much  the  same  on  the  two  sides  of  the  Ocean, 
while  they  are  altogether  different  on  the  two  sides 
of  the  Tweed.  It  might  be  too  much  to  say  that 
the  difference  between  England  and  Scotland  is  a 
difference  in  kind,  while  the  difference  between 
England  and  America  is  only  a  difference  of  degree. 
But  if  we  rule  both  to  be  only  differences  of 
degree,  the  Scottisli  difference  seems  to  me  cer 
tainly  the  wider  of  the  two.  And  of  course  it 
makes  a  great  difference  with  what  part  of  England 
America  is  compared.  Kural  America  differs  far 
more  from  rural  England  than  urban  America  dif 
fers  from  urban  England.  There  was  nothing 
strange  to  me  in  the  general  look  of  the  great  Ame 
rican  cities.  They  were  very  unlike  York  and  Exe 
ter  ;  but  they  were  very  like  Manchester  and  Liver 
pool.  In  short,  wrhen  I  landed  at  New  York  in 
October,  my  first  feeling  was  that  America  was 
very  like  England  ;  when  I  landed  at  Liverpool  in 
April,  my  first  feeling  was  that  England  was  very 
like  America. 

III. 

I  said  just  now  that  I  saw  less  difference  between 
England  and  the  United  States  than  I  find  between 
Eno-land  and  Scotland;  and  that  I  caw  one  chief 

O  ' 

reason  for  the  fact,  namely,  that  English  and  Ame- 


12     IMPBB88I02T8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

rican  law  are  for  the  most  part  the  same,  while 
English  and  Scottish  law  are  for  the  most  part  dif 
ferent.  Now,  on  this  showing,  I  may  possibly  be 
asked  whether  I  do  not  find  a  greater  likeness  be 
tween  Ireland  and  either  England  or  America  than 
I  find  between  either  of  these  lands  and  Scotland. 
In  going  to  Ireland,  as  in  going  to  America,  we 
cross  the  sea — certainly  a  much  smaller  part  of  it — 
and  we  then  find  ourselves  in  a  land  essentially  of 
our  own  law,  while  in  going  to  Scotland  we  keep 
within  our  own  island,  and  yet  find  ourselves  in  a 
land  essentially  of  another  law.  And  it  may  happen 
that  more  superficial  likenesses  between  America  and 
Ireland  may  strike  the  British  visitor  to  America 
pretty  soon  after  his  landing.  It  was  an  American 
visitor  to  England  who  remarked — I  believe  he 
did  not  complain — that  in  England  he  missed  the 
sound  of  the  Irish  accent.  And  he  who  lands  in 
America — above  all  if  he  lands,  as  most  of  us  do, 
at  New  York — will  certainly  remark,  whether  he 
welcomes  or  not,  the  sound  of  the  Irish  accent  at 
the  very  beginning  of  his  sojourn.  Specially 
will  he  do  so  if  he  makes,  as  many  of  us  do, 
his  first  acquaintance  with  dollars  by  spending  a 
large  number  of  them  on  a  New  York  hackney- 
carriage.  But  he  may  perhaps  before  long  come  to 
think  that  the  presence  of  English  law  in  Ireland 


AMERICA  AND  IRELAND.  13 

and  the  presence  of  the  Irish  cab-driver  in  America 
are  alike  phenomena  which  are  a  little  abnormal, 
though  they  may  perhaps  have  a  subtle    connexion 
with  one  another.     It  may  be  that,  if  English  rule, 
and  along  with  it  English   law,  had  never   found 
their  way  into  Ireland,  the  Irish  cab-driver  would 
never  have   found  his  way  to  New  York.      And 
some  may  even  go  on  to  think  that,  if  the  history 
of  mankind  had  taken  that  turn,  three  countries  at 
least  would  be  the  happier  for  it.      Anyhow,  the 
likeness  of  the  law  between  England  and  Ireland  does 
not  bring  with  it  the  same  kind  of  likeness  between 
England  and  Ireland  which  the  likeness  of  the  law 
between  England  and  America  brings  with  it.     And 
the  reason  is  plain.     In  Ireland  English  law,  and  all 
that  comes  of  the  presence  of  English  law,  is  some 
thing  thoroughly  foreign.     In   America   the   pre 
sence  of  English  law,  and  all  that  comes  of  the  pre 
sence  of  English  law,  is  something  thoroughly  na 
tural  and  native.     The  law  of  Ireland  is  like  that  of 
England,  because  Englishmen  conquered  Ireland  and 
forced  their  own  law  upon  the  people  of  Ireland. 
The  law  of  America  is  like  the  law  of  England,  be 
cause  Englishmen,  freely  settling  in  the  new  land  of 
America,  naturally  took  their  own  law  with  them. 
But  Scotland  was  never   either  conquered  in  the 
same  sense  as  Ireland  nor  settled  in  the  same  sense 


14     lMP&B88IOm  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

as  America.  Scotland  therefore  lias  never  accepted 
English  law,  but  keeps  a  wholly  distinct  law  of  her 
own  growth. 

Whatever  therefore  of  likeness  the  English  tra 
veller  in  Ireland  finds  between  that  island  and  his 
own  country  is  due  to  causes  exactly  opposite  to 
those  which  bring  about  the  likeness  between  Eng 
land  and  America.  In  both  cases  the  likeness  is 
due  to  the  presence  of  Englishmen  in  lands  be 
yond  the  bounds  of  England ;  but  it  is  due  to  their 
presence  in  altogether  different  characters.  In  the 
one  case  it  is  the  presence  of  conquerors  in  an  in 
habited  land;  in  the  other  it  is  the  presence  of  set 
tlers  in  what  was  practically  an  uninhabited  land. 
"Whatever  likeness  there  is  between  England  and 
Ireland,  between  America  and  Ireland,  is  only  on 
the  surface.  Whatever  likeness  there  is  between 
England  and  Scotland,  between  England  and  Ame 
rica,  between  America  and  Scotland,  all  belongs  to 
the  very  root  of  the  matter.  The  likenesses  and 
unlikenesses  are  of  course  in  all  cases  due  to  histori 
cal  causes.  But  in  the  one  case  they  are  due  to 
comparatively  modern  historical  events,  since  the 
nations  severally  concerned  had  put  on  their  seve 
ral  national  characters.  In  the  other  case  they  are 
due  to  those  subtler  causes,  those  earlier  events, 
which  ruled  that  the  nations  concerned  should  seve- 
rallv  be  what  thev  are. 


MY  OWN  POSITION.  15 

I  find  that  my  feeling  on  this  head  is  shared  by 
some  British  travellers  in  America,  and  is  not  shared 
by  others.  Some  say  with  me  that  the  difference 
between  England  and  America  struck  them  as  slight, 
as  slighter  than  that  between  England  and  Scotland. 
On  others  the  points  of  unlikeness  have  made  more 
impression.  Doubtless  I  visited  America  under 
circumstances  which  were  likely  to  make  me  dwell 
on  likenesses  rather  than  on  unlikenesses.  It  might 
haply  have  been  otherwise  if  I  had  known  nothing 
of  the  continent  of  Europe,  or  if  I  had  entered 
America,  as  some  have  done,  on  its  western  side. 
But  I  came  to  America  from  the  east,  and  that  as  a 
somewhat  old  stager  in  continental  Europe.  I  came 
as  one  fresh  from  Italy,  Greece,  and  Dalmatia,  as 
one  who  had  used  his  own  house  in  England  as  an 
inn  on  the  road  between  Ragusa  and  Boston. 
Among  a  people  of  the  same  tongue,  of  essentially 
the  same  laws  and  manners,  I  naturally  found  my 
self  at  home,  after  tarrying  in  lands  which  were 
altogether  foreign.  But  I  have  no  doubt  that 
deeper  causes  than  this  would  naturally  lead  me  to 
seize  on  the  most  English  side  of  everything  Ame 
rican.  To  me  the  English-speaking  commonwealth 
on  the  American  mainland  is  simply  one  part  of  the 
great  English  folk,  as  the  English-speaking  kingdom 
in  the  European  island  is  another  part.  My  whole 


16     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

line  of  thought  and  study  leads  me  to  think,  more  per 
haps  than  most  men,  of  the  everlasting  ties  of  blood 
and  speech,  and  less  of  the  accidental  separation 
wrought  by  political  and  geographical  causes.  To 
me  the  English  folk,  wherever  they  may  dwell,  what 
ever  may  be  their  form  of  government,  are  still  one 
people.  It  may  be  that  the  habit  of  constantly 
studying  and  comparing  the  history  of  England  with 
the  history  of  old  Greece  makes  it  easier  for  me  to 
grasp  the  idea  of  a  people  divided  geographically  and 
politically,  but  still  forming  in  the  higher  sense  one 
people.  The  tie  that  bound  Greek  to  Greek  was 
dearer  to  Kallikratidas  than  the  advancement  of 
Spartan  interests  by  barbarian  help.  And  so,  to  my 
mind  at  least,  the  thought  of  the  true  unity  of  the 
scattered  English  folk  is  a  thought  higher  and 
dearer  than  any  thought  of  a  British  Empire  to  the 
vast  majority  of  whose  subjects  the  common  speech 
of  Chatham  and  Washington,  of  Gladstone  and 
Garfield,  is  an  unknown  tongue. 

IY. 

It  may  be  more  important  to  ask  how  far  the 
doctrine  of  the  essential  unity  of  the  divided 
branches  of  the  English  people  is  received  by  those 
whom  it  concerns  on  the  other  side  of  the  Ocean. 
This  is  a  subject  on  which  I  rather  distrust  my 


UNITY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  FOLK.  17 

own  judgement.  I  .feel  that  it  is  a  subject  on 
which  I  am  an  enthusiast,  and  that  my  enthusiasm 
may  possibly  bias  and  colour  any  report  that  I  may 
try  to  make.  And,  of  course,  I  can  give  only  the 
impressions  which  I  have  drawn  from  certain  classes 
of  people,  impressions  which  may  be  widely  dif 
ferent  from  those  which  another  man  may  have 
drawn  from  other  classes  of  people.  As  far  as  I 
can  speak  of  my  American  acquaintances,  I  should 
say  that  with  most  of  them  the  essential  unity  of 
the  English  folk  is  one  of  those  facts  which  every 
body  in  a  sense  knows,  but  of  which  few  people 
really  carry  their  knowledge  about  with  them.  The 
main  facts  of  the  case  are  so  plain  that  they  cannot 
fail  to  be  known  to  every  man  among  a  people  who 
know  their  own  immediate  and  recent  history  so 
well  as  the  Americans  do.  That  the  older  American 
States  were  in  the  beginning  English  colonies,  that 
the  great  mass  of  their  inhabitants  are  still  of  Eng 
lish  descent,  that,  though  the  infusion  of  foreign 
elements  has  been  large,  yet  it  is  the  English  kernel 
which  has  assimilated  these  foreign  elements,  all 
these  are  plain  facts  which  every  decently  taught 
man  in  the  United  States  cannot  fail  in  a  certain 
sense  to  know.  That  is,  if  he  were  examined  on 
the  subject,  he  could  not  fail  to  give  the  right 
answers.  But  the  facts  do  not  seem  to  be  to  him 


18     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

living  things,  constantly  in  his  mind.  Those  Ameri 
cans  with  whom  I  have  spoken,  all  of  them  without 
a  single  exception,  readily  and  gladly  accepted  the 
statement  of  what  I  may  call  their  Englishry,  when 
it  was  set  before  them.  Once  or  twice  indeed  I 
have  known  the  statement  come  from  the  American 
side.  But,  though  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine 
was  ready  and  glad,  it  seemed  to  be  the  acceptance 
of  a  doctrine  which  could  not  be  denied  when  it 
was  stated,  but  which  he  who  accepted  it  had  not 
habitually  carried  about  in  his  daily  thoughts.  And 
when  the  statement  came  from  the  American  side, 
it  came,  not  as  an  obvious  truth,  but  rather  as  the 
result  of  the  speaker's  own  observation,  as  a  fact 
which  he  had  noticed,  but  which  might  have  escaped 
the  notice  of  others.  I  will  illustrate  my  meaning 
by  an  incident  which  happened  to  myself.  At  a 
college  dinner  to  which  I  was  asked,  one  gentleman 
proposed  my  health  in  words  which  in  everything 
else  were  most  kind  and  flattering,  but  in  which  I 
was  spoken  of  as  a  man  of  "  a  foreign  nationality." 
In  my  answer  I  thanked  the  proposer  of  the  toast 
for  everything  else  that  he  had  said,  but  begged  him 
to  withdraw  one  word :  I  was  not  of  a  foreign 

o 

nationality,  but  of  the  same  nationality  as  himself. 
My  answer  was  warmly  cheered,  and  several  other 
speakers  took  up  the  same  line.  The  unity  of  Old 


AMERICAN  FEELING.  19 

and  New  England  was  in  every  mouth  ;  one  gentle 
man  who  had  been  American  Minister  in  England 
told  how  exactly  the  same  thing  had  happened  to 
him  at  a  Lord  Mayor's  dinner  in  London,  how  he 
had  been  spoken  of  as  a  foreigner,  and  how  he  had 
refused  the  name,  just  as  I  had  done. 

Now  this  story  is  an  exact  instance  of  what  I  say. 
The  feeling  of  unity  between  the  two  severed 
branches  is  really  present  in  the  American  breast, 
but  it  needs  something  special  to  wake  it  up.  It 
comes  most  naturally  to  the  Englishman  of  America 
to  speak  of  the  Englishman  of  Britain  as  a  "  fo 
reigner."  The  word  is  often  so  applied  in  American 
newspapers  and  American  books.  But  when  the 
Englishman  of  Britain  formally  rejects  the  name, 
the  Englishman  of  America  frankly  and  gladly  ac 
cepts  the  rejection,  and  welcomes  the  European 
kinsman  as  truly  one  of  his  own  house.  Now  I 
know  not  how  far  I  may  judge  others  by  myself ; 
but  I  should  say  that  the  feeling  in  England  is 
somewhat  different.  I  do  not  think  that  Americans 
are  commonly  thought  of,  or  spoken  of,  as  "  fo 
reigners."  In  the  story  that  I  have  just  told,  the  case 
may  have  simply  been  that  the  Lord  Mayor  reckoned 
the  representative  of  the  United  States  among 
"  Foreign  Ministers,"  a  formula  in  which  the  use  of 
the  unpleasant  word  could  hardly  be  avoided.  It 


20     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

seems  to  me  that  the  American  in  England  is  wel 
comed  above  other  men  from  beyond  sea  on  the 
express  ground  that  he  is  not  a  foreigner.  Ameri 
cans  sometimes  complain  that  they  are  welcomed 
indeed  in  England,  but  welcomed  as  if  tliey  were 
objects  of  curiosity,  sometimes  even  that  the  wel 
come  is  mingled  with  condescension.  The  conde 
scension  I  believe  to  be  imaginary,  a  spectre  called  up 
by  that  spirit  of  touchiness  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken.  The  curiosity  is  most  real.  But  it  is  the 
curiosity  with  which  we  welcome  a  kinsman  whom 
we  have  often  heard  of  but  never  seen.  It  may 
sometimes  take  rather  .grotesque  shapes,  but  it  is  in 
its  essence  that  genuine  interest  which  attaches  to 
acknowledged  kindred.  In  America  it  struck  me 
that  the  British  visitor  was  welcomed,  kindly,  cordi 
ally,  hospitably  welcomed,  but  still  welcomed  in  the 
beginning  as  a  stranger.  That  he  is  no  stranger  but 
a  kinsman  is  a  truth  which  dawns  upon  his  Ameri 
can  friends  at  a  rather  later  stage.  The  American, 
it  seems  to  me,  feels  a  greater  distinction  between 
himself  and  the  Englishman  of  Britain  than  the 
Englishman  of  Britain  feels  between  himself  and 
the  American. 

A  good  deal  of  this  feeling  is  the  natural  re 
sult  of  past  events,  and  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  the  result  of  past  events  has  been  somewhat 


EFFECTS  OF  OLD  GRUDGES.  21 

aggravated  by  modern  forms  of  speaking.  The 
Englishman  of  America — he  must  allow  me  to  call 
him  so — has  something  to  get  over  in  acknowledg 
ing  the  kindred  of  the  Englishman  of  Britain ;  the 
Englishman  of  Britain  has  nothing  to  get  over  in 
acknowledging  the  kindred  of  the  Englishman  of 
America.  In  the  broad  fact  of  the  War  of  Inde 
pendence  there  is  really  nothing  of  which  either 
side  need  be  ashamed.  Each  side  acted  as  it  was 
natural  for  each  side  to  act.  "We  can  now  see  that 
both  King  George  and  the  British  nation  were 
quite  wrong ;  but  for  them  to  have  acted  otherwise 
than  as  they  did  would  have  needed  a  superhuman 
measure  of  wisdom,  which  few  kings  and  few 
nations  ever  had.  The  later  American  war  within 
the  present  century,  a  war  which,  one  would  think, 
could  have  been  so  easily  avoided  on  either  side,  is 
a  far  uglier  memory  than  the  War  of  Independence. 
Still  the  War  of  Independence  must  be,  on  the 
American  side,  a  formidable  historic  barrier  in  the 
way  of  perfect  brotherhood.  A  war  of  that  kind  is 
something  quite  unlike  an  ordinary  war  between 
two  nations  which  are  already  thoroughly  formed. 
Two  such  nations  can  soon  afford  to  forget,  they 
can  almost  afford  to  smile  over,  their  past  differ 
ences.  It  is  otherwise  when  one  nation  dates  its 
national  being — in  the  political  sense  of  the  word 


22     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

"  nation" — from  the  defeat  and  humiliation  of  the 
other.  If  the  American  nation  had  parted  off 
peacefully  from  the  British  nation,  there  would  be 
no  difficulty  on  either  side  in  looking  on  the  two 
English-speaking  nations  as  simply  severed  branches 
of  the  same  stock.  The  independent  colony  would, 
in  such  a  case,  find  far  less  difficulty  in  feeling 
itself  to  be,  though  independent,  still  a  colony, 
far  less  difficulty  in  feeling  that  all  the  common 
memories  and  associations  of  the  common  stock 
belong  to  the  colony  no  less  than  to  the  mother- 
country.  In  such  a  case  the  new  England  might 
have  been  to  the  old  what  Syracuse,  not  what 
Korkyra,  was  to  their  common  mother  Corinth. 
But  wThen  independence  was  won  in  arms,  and  that 
by  the  help  of  foreign  allies,  when  the  very  being 
of  the  new  power  was  a  badge  of  triumph  over  the 
old,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  the  natural  self-asser 
tion  of  a  new-born  people  often  took  the  form  of 
putting  the  past,  the  dependent  past,  as  far  as  might 
be  out  of  sight.  Parents  and  brethren  had  become 
enemies  ;  strangers  had  acted  as  friends  ;  it  was  not 
wonderful  if  it  was  thought  a  point  of  honour  to 
snap  the  old  ties  as  far  as  might  be,  to  take  up  in 
everything,  as  far  as  might  be,  the  position  of  a 
new  nation,  rather  than  that  of  a  severed  branch  of 
an  old  nation.  I  can  understand  that  the  English- 


THE  DEPENDENT  COLONIES.  23 

man  of  America  may  be  tempted  to  see  something 
of  sacrifice,  something  like  surrender  of  his  national 
position,  when  he  is  called  on  to  admit  himself 
simply  to  be  an  Englishman  of  America.  The 
Englishman  of  Britain  has  no  such  difficulties.  To 

O 

his  eye  the  kindred  lies  on  the  surface,  plain  to  be 
seen  of  all  men.  But  it  is  not  wonderful  if  the  eye 
of  the  Englishman  of  America  is  a  degree  less  clear 
sighted.  He  may  be  pardoned  if  to  him  the  kin 
dred  does  not  lie  so  visibly  on  the  surface,  if  it  is 
to  him  something  which  he  gladly  acknowledges 
when  it  is  pointed  out,  but  which  he  needs  to  have 
pointed  out  before  he  acknowledges  it. 

Another  cause  which  helps  to  keep  the  mother- 
country  and  the  independent  colonies  apart — at 
least  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  the  independent 
colonies — is  the  existence,  and  not  only  the  exist 
ence  but  the  near  neighbourhood,  of  the  dependent 
colonies  of  England.  If  Australia,  Canada,  South 
Africa,  were  politically  as  distinct  from  England  as 
the  United  States  are,  I  feel  sure  that  the  tie  be 
tween  England  and  the  United  States  would  be 
drawn  much  closer.  As  it  is,  there  are  but  two  in 
dependent  English-speaking  nations  in  the  world ; 
they  therefore  stand  out  in  a  distinct  and  marked 
opposition  to  each  other.  Were  there  four  or  five 
such  nations,  no  two  would  stand  out  in  this  way  for 


24     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

separate  comparison ;  the  unity  among  them  would 
be  far  more  striking  than  the  diversity.  And  the 
United  States  especially  would  no  -longer  have  a 
kind  of  perpetual  reminder  of  one  side  of  the 
history  and  relations  of  the  mother-country  in  the 
shape  of  a  dependent  colony  of  the  mother-country 
on  its  own  borders.  Canada,  either  independent  or 
joined  to  the  United  States,  would  no  longer  sug 
gest  thoughts  which,  whether  they  look  forward  or 
backward,  are  inconsistent  with  the  full  acknow 
ledgement  of  the  general  brotherhood  of  the  English 
folk. 

I  have  applied  the  name  English  folk  to  all. 
I  cannot  help  thinking  that  certain  forms  of 
speech,  possibly  unavoidable  forms  of  speech, 
have  done  much  to  keep  the  two  branches  of  the 
divided  people  asunder.  The  ideal  after  which  I 
would  fain  strive  would  be  for  all  members  of  the 
scattered  English  folk  to  feel  at  least  as  close  a 
tie  to  one  another  as  was  felt  of  old  by  all 
members  of  the  scattered  Hellenic  folk.  Geo 
graphical  distance,  political  separation,  fierce 
rivalry,  cruel  warfare,  never  snapped  the  enduring 
tie  which  bound  every  Greek  to  every  other  Greek. 
So  the  Englishman  of  Britain,  of  America,  of 
Africa,  of  Australia,  should  be  each  to  his  distant 
brother  as  were  the  Greek  of  Massalia,  the  Greek 


ANALOGY  WITH  OLD   GREECE.  25 

of  Kyrene,  and  the  Greek  of  Cherson.  And, 
in  order  to  compass  this  end,  the  scattered 
branches  of  the  common  stock  must  have  a 
common  name.  This  the  old  Greeks  had.  The 
Hellen  remained  a  Hellen  wherever  he  settled, 
and  wherever  he  settled  the  land  on  which  he 
settled  became  Hellas.  The  Greek  of  Attica  or 
Peloponnesos  did  not  distinguish  himself  from 
the  Greek  of  Spain  by  calling  himself  a  Greek 
and  his  'distant  kinsman  a  Spaniard.  But  it  is 
hard  to  find  a  name  fitted  in  modern  usage  to 
take  in  all  the  scattered  branches  of  the  English 
folk.  A  certain  class  of  orators  on  both  sides  of 
Ocean  would  seem  to  have  dived  into  the  char 
ters  of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  and  thence 
to  have  fished  up  the  antiquated  name  of  "  Anglo- 
Saxon."  We  hear  much  big  talk  about  the  "Anglo- 
Saxon  race"  somewhat  to  the  wrong  of  that  greater 
Teutonic  body  of  which  Angles  and  Saxons  are 
fellow-members  with  many  others.  But  those  who 
use  the  name  most  likely  attach  no  particular 
meaning  to  it ;  to  them  it  goes  along  with  such 
modern  creations  as  Anglo-Normans,  Anglo-In 
dians,  Anglo-Catholics.  The  very  narrow  histori 
cal  sense  of  the  word  "Anglo-Saxon"  is  never 
thought  of.  It  is  not  remembered  that  its  use  was 
to  mark  the  union  of  Angles  and  Saxons  under 


26     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

one  king,  an  use  which  naturally  was  forgotten  as 
the  distinction  between  Angles  and  Saxons  was 
forgotten.  Anyhow  the  name  is  antiquated  and 
affected ;  it  is  not  the  name  which  most  naturally 
springs  to  any  man's  lips :  it  is  a  name  artificially 
devised  to  answer  a  certain  purpose.  For  the 
Englishman  of  Britain  and  the  Englishman  of 
America  to  greet  one  another  as  "  Anglo-Saxons" 
is  very  much  as  if  the  Greek  of  Peloponnesos  and 
the  Greek  of  Spain  had  greeted  one  another,  not 
as  Hellenes,  but  as  Danaans  or  Pelasgians.  Yet 
there  certainly  is  a  difficulty,  such  as  the  Greek 
never  felt,  in  their  greeting  one  another  by  their 
true  name  of  Englishmen.  So  to  do  is  easier  in 
Latin  than  in  English.  "  Angli,"  "  Anglici,"  even 
"  Angligense,"  might  serve  the  turn  quite  well ;  but 
the  word  "  Englishman"  has  somehow  got  a  local 
meaning,  as  if  it  belonged  to  the  soil  rather  than  to 
the  stock,  as  if  it  expressed  allegiance  to  a  certain 
government  rather  than  partnership  in  a  certain 
speech  and  descent.  Now  how  old  is  this  use? 
How  long  is  it  since  the  word  "  American"  was 
applied  to  English  settlers  in  America?  and  how 
long — a  much  shorter  time  undoubtedly — since  the 
word  "  American  "  was  first  opposed  to  the  word 
" English"?  These  questions  belong  to  that  large 
class  of  questions  which  cannot  be  answered  off- 


NEED   OF  A  NAME.  27 

hand  when  the  answer  is  wanted,  questions  to 
which  the  answer  can  be  found  only  by  keeping 
them  constantly  in  mind,  and  noting  everything 
that  directly  or  indirectly  bears  upon  them.  In  a 
hymn  of  one  of  the  Wesleys  there  is  a  line  which 
runs  thus : 

"  The  dark  Americans  convert." 

At  that  line  the  minds  of  some  citizens  of  the 
United  States  have  been  known  to  be  offended. 
Yet  it  is  certain  that  by  "  Americans "  Wesley 
meant  only  the  native  Indians,  and  I  conceive  that 
he  could  not  have  applied  the  name  "  American" 
to  the  English  folk  of  any  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies. 
It  is  yet  more  to  be  noticed  that  throughout 
the  contemporary  records  of  the  War  of  Indepen 
dence,  not  only,  as  far  as  I  have  seen,  is  the  word 
"  English"  never  contrasted  with  "  American,"  but 
the  name  "  English"  is  never  applied  to  the  ene 
mies  against  whom  Washington  and  his  fellows 
were  striving.  The  word  which  is  commonly 
used — which,  as  far  as  I  have  seen,  is  invariably 
used — is  "British."  This  is  just  as  it  should  be; 
the  distinction  between  "  American  "  and  "  British" 
marks  the  political  and  geographical  severance 
between  the  English  in  Britain  and  the  English  in 
America,  without  shutting  out  either  from  their 


28     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

common  right  to  the  English  name.  Words  like 
"colonial,"  "  provincial,"  "  continental,"  went  out  of 
use  as  the  colonies  ceased  to  be  provinces,  and 
declared  themselves  to  be  independent  states. 
The  new  power  needed  a  new  name,  and  no  name 
more  distinctive  than  "  American"  was  to  be 
had.  But  "American"  was  still  not  opposed  to 
"  English ;"  it  was  opposed  to  "  British,"  as  mark 
ing  the  severance  between  the  English  folk  in 
Britain  and  the  English  folk  in  America.  "We 
have  next  to  ask,  When  did  this  usage  go  out? 
When  did  "  English"  instead  of  "  British"  come  to 
be  the  word  commonly  opposed  to  "  American"  ? 
Again  we  cannot  answer  offhand ;  but  "  British" 
certainly  was  the  word  in  use  at  the  time  of  the 
war  of  1813,  and  I  fancy  that  it  was  in  use  much 
later.  I  have  been  told  that  the  change  took 
place  about  the  time  of  the  Oregon  disputes.  I 
have  also  been  told  that  the  change  was  really 
brought  in  out  of  good  feeling  towards  the  mother- 
countrv.  "  British"  was  a  name  which  suggested 
old  wrongs,  while  no  such  unpleasant  memories 
gathered  round  the  English  name.  I  can  neither 
confirm  nor  deny  either  of  these  statements;  but 
that  the  change  has  taken  place  there  is  no  doubt. 
The  American  no  longer  familiarly  uses  the  word 
"  British"  to  denote  the  English  of  Britain.  As 


"ENGLISH"  AND  "BRITISH."  29 

long  as  lie  did  so,  his  language  was  at  least  patient 
of  the  interpretation  that  he  still  looked  on  himself 
as  an  Englishman.  He  now  habitually  uses  the 
words  "  English,"  "  Englishman,"  in  every  possible 
relation,  to  denote  the  English  of  Britain  as  dis 
tinguished  from  himself.  That  is,  he  gives  up  the 
English  name  as  no  longer  belonging  to  him. 
Even  if  the  change  was  made  out  of  friendli 
ness,  I  cannot  look  on  it  as  a  change  for  the 
better.  Of  the  two,  I  had  rather  that  the  Eng 
lishman  of  America  should  look  on  me  as  a  brother 
with  whom  he  has  a  quarrel,  than  that  he  should 
look  on  me  as  a  stranger  in  blood,  even  though  a 
stranger  admitted  to  his  friendship. 

It  was  acutely  remarked  to  me  by  an  American 
friend  that  it  would  be  easy  to  use  the  adjective 
"  British"  according  to  the  older  usage  which  I  had 
said  that  I  wished  to  see  restored,  but  that  a  sub 
stantive  was  lacking.  This  is  perfectly  true.  The 
only  available  substantive,  "Briton,"  will  not  do. 
In  strictness  that  name  means  a  Welshman,  and  its 
employment  in  that  sense  has  gone  out  of  use  for  a 
much  shorter  time  than  people  commonly  think. 
In  any  other  use  the  name  belongs  to  the  same 
class  of  names  as  "Anglo-Saxon."  It  is  not  the 
natural  name  by  which  an  Englishman  speaks  of 
himself;  it  is  used  either  in  a  half-laughing  vein, 


30     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

or  because  it  is  thought  to  be  fine,  or  else  of  set 
purpose  to  find  some  name  which  shall  take  in  all 
the  people  of  Great  Britain.  Yet  the  only  alterna 
tive  would  seem  to  be  the  grotesque  and  rather 
ugly  form  "  Britisher."  And  I  always  told  my 
American  friends  that  I  had  rather  be  called  a 
Britisher  than  an  Englishman,  if  by  calling  me  an 
Englishman  they  meant  to  imply  that  they  were 
not  Englishmen  themselves. 

Then  the  name  "  American"  also  suggests  some 
questions.  No  one  uses  it  now  in  the  sense  of 
"Wesley's  "  dark  Americans."  That  is,  no  one  uses 
it  exclusively  of  them.  The  name  takes  them  in 
for  some  purposes,  while  for  others  it  shuts  them 
out.  The  word  "  American "  for  some  purposes 
means  the  United  States  only;  for  some  other 
purposes  it  means  the  whole  American  continent. 
It  is  certainly  odd  that  "American  languages " 
would  be  everywhere  understood  as  meaning  the 
native  languages  of  the  continent,  while  "  Ameri 
can  literature"  means  so  much  of  English  literature 
as  belongs  locally  to  the  United  States.  To  me 
Prescott  and  Motley  seem  as  much  English  his 
torians,  Longfellow  and  Whittier  seem  as  much 
English  poets,  as  if  they  had  been  born  and  had 
written  in  Great  Britain.  They  are  English  writers, 
writing  in  the  English  tongue,  their  own  tongue. 


THE  NAME  "AMERICAN."  31 

in  which  they  have  just  as  much  right  as  any  native 
of   Great  Britain.     And  we  claim  Mr.  Lowell  as 
English  also,  though  he  did  write   an   unpleasant 
paper  about  "  Foreigners."     But  in  common  Ame 
rican  speech, "  English  literature"  means  the  litera 
ture  of  the  local  England  only.     And  "  American 
literature"  seems  to  belong  exclusively  to  the  United 
States.     The  phrase  hardly  takes   in   the   English 
literature,  if  there  be  any,  of  Canada ;  it  certainly 
does  not  take  in  the  Spanish  literature,  if  there  be 
any,  of  Mexico.     The  oddest  use  of  all  is  when  the 
word  "American"  is   used  geographically  to  shut 
out  certain  parts  of  the  American  continent.     At 
Niagara  people  talk  of  the  "American  side"  and 
the   "  English  side."      I   suggested,    "  for   <  Ame 
rican'    read    'English,'    and    for    'English'    read 
<  French.'  "     The  truth  is  that  the  great  land  of  the 
United  States  has  not  yet  got  a  name,  a  real  local 
name,  like  England  or  France,  or  even  like  Canada 
or  Mexico.     I  know  not  whether  it  is  any  comfort 
that  the  lack  is  common  to  the  United  States  of 
America  with  the  other  chief  confederations  of  the 
world.     The  words  "  Switzerland ?'   and   "Swiss," 
though  they   had   been   for   ages   in  familiar  use, 
never  became  the  formal  style  of  the  Old  League  of 
High  Germany  till  the   present   century.     So  the 
kingdom  of  the  Netherlands,  once  the  Seven  United 


32     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Provinces,  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  "  Holland," 
the  name  of  one  of  its  provinces  only,  while  we 
commonly  call  its  people  "  Dutch,"  the  name  of  a 
great  race  which  takes  in  ourselves.     It  is  by  a  kin 
dred  confusion,  though  one  which  does   not   take 
exactly  the  same  form,  a   confusion   arising  from 
the  same  lack  of  a  real  name  for  the  country,  that, 
when  we  speak  of  "  American  literature,"  "  Ameri 
can  institutions,"  "  American  politics,"  "  American 
society,"  we  mean  the  institutions,  the   literature, 
the  politics,  and   the  society,  of  the  United  States 
only,    while   by  "American  zoology,"  "American 
geology,"  etc.,  we  mean  those  of  the  whole  conti 
nent,  and  "  American  languages"  distinctly  excludes 
those  languages  in  which  alone  American  literature 
has  been  possible.     The  want  of  a  real  name  for 
the  land,  and   the   awkwardness   to  which   one   is 
driven  for  lack  of  it,  struck  me  at  every  turn  in  my 
American   travels.     The  thought  even   sometimes 
occurred,  What  if  the  name  of  JSTew  England,  a 
name  surely  to  be  cherished  on  every  ground,  had 
spread  over  the  whole  Union  ?     It  would  have  been 
better  than  nothing ;  but  a  real  geographical  name 
would   be   better  still.     The  lack  has  been  felt  in 
the   country  itself,   and   somebody  once  proposed 
"  Fredonia."     I  remember  in  my  boyhood  a  map  of 
the  United  States  with  that  name  on  it.     One  may 


"FREDONIA."  33 

guess  that  the  author  of  the  name  had  the  words 
free  and  freedom  in  his  head ;  but  after  what 
analogy  did  he  coin  his  name  ?  "  Fredonia"  quite 
outdoes  even  the  absurdity  of  "  Secessia,"  of  which 
newspaper  correspondents  thought  it  fine  to  talk 
twenty  years  back.  Some  one  may  some  day  make 
the  same  attempt  with  a  better  result.  Meanwhile 
I  see  the  evil,  but  I  cannot  undertake  to  find  the 
remedy  by  inventing  a  name. 

V. 

Now  mankind  are,  after  all,  so  deeply  influenced 
by  names  and  formulae  that  it  does  seern  by  no 
means  unlikely  that  these  ways  of  speaking  have 
really  had  some  share  in  keeping  up  and  widening 
the  distinction  between  the  two  branches  of  the 
English  folk.  They  did  not  cause  the  distinction, 
for  they  are  themselves  among  the  effects  of  it ; 
but,  in  the  way  in  which  causes  and  effects  so  con 
stantly  react  on  one  another,  they  may  very  well 
have  helped  in  sharpening  the  distinction  and 
making  it  more  long-lived.  Another  cause  has 
perhaps  had  a  still  greater  share ;  namely,  a  grow 
ing  belief  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  have 
somehow  lost  the  right — whether  that  right  is  to  be 
deemed  a  privilege  or  otherwise — to  be  looked  on 
as  an  English  people.  Some  among  them  are  very 


34     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

anxious,  strange  as  it  seems,  to  make  themselves 
out  to  be  a  people  of  no  particular  stock,  to  be  what 
the  Germans  emphatically  call  a  Mischvollc.  Since 
I  have  made  it  somewhat  of  my  business  to  set 
forth  the  essential  oneness  of  the  two  great  branches 
of  the  English  people,  I  have  been  met,  sometimes 
in  friendly,  sometimes  in  unfriendly,  guise,  but  in 
both  cases  in  perfect  seriousness,  by  hints  that  I 
have  forgotten  the  great  influx  of  strangers,  Ger 
mans  and  Scandinavians,  for  instance,  into  the 
United  States,  which  is  supposed  to  have  caused  a 
real  difference  of  race  between  the  English  in 
Britain  and  the  English  in  America.  I  have  cer 
tainly  not  forgotten  a  very  obvious  fact,  one  which 
I  have  often  insisted  on,  and  which,  when  really 
understood,  tells  my  way.  Those  who  argue  in 
this  way  forget  that  the  phenomena  of  England 
and  America  are  in  this  matter  really  the  same. 
Since  the  settlement  of  the  American  colonies, 
foreign  settlement  in  England,  chiefly  German  and 
French,  though  certainly  much  smaller  than  in 
America,  has  been  quite  large  enough  to  be  per 
ceptible.  But  in  both  cases  the  dominant  English 
element  asserts  its  supremacy  by  assimilating  the 
stranger.  Whether  in  Britain  or  in  America,  the 
German  or  other  foreigner  becomes  English ;  the 
Englishman  never  becomes  German.  I  must  here 


FOREIGN  INFUSIONS.  35 

repeat  some  simple  truths.     Strict  purity  of  blood 
is  not  to  be  found  in  any  nation,  and  the  greater 
part  a  nation  plays  in  the  history  of  the  world,  the 
further  it  is  sure  to  be  from  any  such  purity.     But 
in  most  nations  there  is  some  one  element  which  is 
more  than  an  element.     There  is  something  which 
is  in  truth  the  essence  of  the  nation,  the  kernel 
round  which  all  other  elements  grow,  that  which 
attracts  and  assimilates  them  all  to  itself.     Alike  in 
Britain  and  in  the  United  States,  the  part  of  this 
dominant  and  assimilating  element  is  played  by  the 
English  stock  which  settled  in  the  one  land  in  the 
fifth  century,  in  the  other  in  the  seventeenth.     I 
am  fully  aware  that  there  are  parts  of  the  United 
States  where  more  German  is  heard  than  English. 
Buly  there  is  no  part  of  the  United  States  where 
English  has  been  supplanted  by  German.     When 
any  State  exchanges  the  English  speech  and  law  for 
the  speech  and  law  of  some  other  people,  then  I 
shall  allow  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  are 
a  mixed  race  in  the  sense  which  is  intended.     Till 
then   I   shall  hold  them  to  be  an  English  people 
which  has  adopted    and   assimilated — just   as   the 
English   of    Britain    have    done   on    a   somewhat 
smaller  scale — a  large  infusion  of  strangers.     Into 
minuter  questions  as  to  the  nature  of  assimilation, 
its  comparative  speed  and  the  like  under  different 
pets  of  circumstances,  I  will  not  now  enter. 


36     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  strength  of  the  English  stock  in  the 
United  States  is  nowhere  more  clearly  shown  than 
in  the  fact  that  it  not  only  assimilates  all  foreign 
elements  in  those  lands  which  were  colonies  of 
England  or  colonies  of  such  colonies,  but  that  it 
makes  itself  dominant  in  lands  which  were  never 
settled  from  England,  but  which  were  settled  from 
other  European  lands.  The  short  history  of  New 
Sweden,  the  longer  history  of  New  Netherland, 
shows  us  the  way  in  which  one  body  of  Teutonic 
settlers  gave  way  to  another,  and  how  the  various 
kindred  elements  have  been  fused  together,  but 
not  without  leaving  signs  of  earlier  diversity.  In 
some  parts  of  New  York  City,  indeed,  the  Low- 
Dutch  stock,  whether  of  Holland  or  of  England, 
does  seem  to  be  overshadowed  by  that  High-Dutch 
infusion  which  sometimes  veils  the  Hebrew.  But 
at  Albany  the  influence  of  Holland  and  Zealand  is 
perfectly  visible,  and  at  Schenectady  one  might 
almost  think  that  their  High  Mightinesses  still 
ruled  on  both  sides  of  the  Ocean.  But  the  lands 
north-west  of  the  Ohio,  above  all  the  lands  west 
of  the  Mississippi,  have  a  yet  more  special  his 
tory  of  their  own,  and  one  which  tells  the  same 
lesson,  in  another  but  certainly  a  not  less  emphatic 
way.  In  the  one  we  find  a  land  won  by  English 
men  in  warfare,  when  the  colonies  of  England 


THE  OLD  FRENCH  SETTLEMENTS.  37 

still   were   provinces,  from   the   grasp    of    earlier 
colonists  from  France.     In   the   other   we  find   a 
land  which  never  was  a  possession  of  the  British 
crown,  which  had  no  part  or  lot  in  the   struggle 
which   gave   the    colonies    of    England    indepen 
dence,    a   land   to   whose   people  Washington  and 
the   elder  Adams  were  men  of  a  foreign  tongue, 
chiefs  of   a  foreign  nation — a  land  which  became 
part     of    the    soil  of   the    new    English-speaking 
folk,  neither  by  warfare  against  the  elder  England 
nor  by  settlement  from  the  elder  England,  but  by 
bargain  and  sale  in  the  days  of  the  third  President. 
In  the  State  of  Missouri,  in  the  city  of  St.  Louis— 
of  the  southern  Louisiana  which  keeps  its  old  name 
I  cannot  speak — the  name  of  the  city  at  once  tells 
its  history ;  and,  if  we  look  a  little  deeper,  we  soon 
find  signs  which  tell  us  that  we  are  in  a  land  which 
once  was  French.     Yet  this  land  is  now  practically 
English,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  rest  of  the  United 
States  are  English ;   and  in  the  wake  of  settlers  of 
English  speech  has  come   the  usual  following   of 
strangers,  both  of   kindred   and  of  foreign  blood. 
The  elder  French  stock  is  not  driven  out,  but  it  is 
hidden  till  we  specially  search  for  it.     And  this 
last  land  supplies  another  lesson.     We  have  here  at 
once  a  striking  parallel  and  a  striking  contrast  to 
some  of  the  lands  of  the  most  famous  European 


38     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Confederation.  As  the  once  Romance  lands  of 
America  revere  the  real  Washington,  who  certainly 
did  nothing  for  them,  so  the  still  Romance  lands  of 
Switzerland  revere  the  mythical  Tell,  who  may,  at 
least  in  a  figure,  be  said  to  have  done  something 
against  them.  Not  only  are  the  legendary  heroes 
of  the  Three  Lands  reverenced  on  the  neutral 
ground  of  Yaud  and  Geneva,  they  are  reverenced  in 
Ticino  itself,  where  the  men  who  were  so  zealous 
for  freedom  on  their  own  soil  showed  themselves 
only  as  the  harshest  of  taskmasters.  The  contrast  lies 
in  this :  the  Romance  lands  of  Switzerland  are  Ro 
mance  still ;  the  Romance  lands  of  America  have 
ceased  to  be  Romance.  The  real  and  mythical 
worthies  of  the  elder  Switzerland  assuredly  did  no 
thing  either  for  the  land  or  the  men  of  the  Burgun- 
dian  and  Italian  cantons ;  but  the  real  worthies  of 
the  elder  States  of  the  American  Union,  if  they  did 
nothing  for  the  lands  of  Missouri  and  Louisiana, 
assuredly  did  much  for  the  forefathers  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  present  inhabitants  of  those  lands. 
Here  are  instances  in  which  the  local  history  of  the 
American  States  connects  itself,  sometimes  merely 
by  analogy,  sometimes  by  direct  cause  and  effect, 
with  European  history,  and  sometimes  with  the 
oldest  European  history.  In  this  way,  as  in  so  many 
otherpj  we  soon  come  to  learn  that,  in  a  land  where 


FEELING   OF  BROTHERHOOD.  39 

everything  at  first  sight  seems  to  be  of  yesterday, 
the  past,  even  the  very  remote  past,  has  struck  its 
roots  very  deep  indeed. 

The  English  stock  in  the  United  States  is  thus 
seen  to  be  so  strong  that  it  changes  even  the  settle 
ments  of  France  into  lands  which  are  practically 
English.  Yet  there  is  felt  to  be  some  strangeness 
in  applying  the  English  name  to  lands  which  never 
were  English  in  the  political  sense.  It  needs  a  little 
thought  to  take  in  that  in  another  sense  the  name  is 
strictly  applicable.  This  is  one  of  the  cases  which 
illustrate  my  general  proposition,  which  explain 
why  the  Englishman  of  America  is  less  likely  to 
carry  about  with  him  the  feeling  of  common 
brotherhood  than  the  Englishman  of  Britain  is, 
though  he  accepts  it  willingly  and  gladly  when  it  is 
fairly  set  before  him.  The  feeling  in  short  exists 
unconsciously,  and  it  shows  itself  unconsciously  in  a 
thousand  ways.  It  is  hardly  a  contradiction  to  say 
that,  where  the  distinction  between  the  two  severed 
branches  is  most  sharply  and  purposely  drawn,  the 
fact  that  it  is  so  purposely  drawn  is  really  a  witness 
to  the  real  absence  of  any  essential  distinction. 
American  interest  in  England  seems  to  me  to  be 
generally  as  keen  as  any  of  us  could  wish  it  to  be. 
The  forms  which  it  takes  are  various ;  some  are  all 
that  we  could  wish  them  to  be ;  others  sometimes 


40     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

are  not  always  so  likely  to  lead  to  the  result  for 
which  we  are  seeking. 

I  will  here  illustrate  the  different  ways  in  which 
sometimes  likeness,  sometimes  unlikeness,  is  apt  to 
strike  most  strongly  according  to  circumstances  by 
a  parallel  case  from  travel  on  the  European  conti 
nent.  An  Englishman  most  commonly  begins  his 
travels  in  France,  he  very  often  begins  his  continen 
tal  travels  of  any  kind,  with  a  journey  in  Normandy. 
The  result  of  this  is  that  he  fails  to  see  how  much 
Normandy  and  England  have  in  common.  If 
Normandy  is  the  first  continental  land  that  he 
visits,  he  is  naturally  most  struck  by  the  points  of 
unlikeness  between  Normandy  and  England.  Let 
him  go  straight  on  into  Aquitaine,  and  see  Nor 
mandy  as  he  comes  back,  and  he  will  at  once  see  how 
much  England  and  Normandy  have  in  common  as 
compared  with  England  and  Aquitaine.  Now  if 
this  is  true  of  lands  speaking  different  tongues,  it 
has  tenfold  truth  between  lands  speaking  the  same 
tongue.  Everything  leads  the  American  who  visits 
Europe  to  visit  England  before  any  other  part  of 
Europe.  Indeed,  unless  he  takes  special  pains  to 
chalk  out  some  other  road,  he  will,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  be  taken  to  England  first  of  all,  saving  the 
chance  of.  an  earlier  hour  or  two  in  Ireland.  But 
I  have  seriously  counselled  American  friends  who 


ORDER  OF  TRAVELLING.  41 

have  never  been  in  Europe,  not  to  visit  England 
first.  I  have  even  counselled  them,  if  they  can 
manage  it — and  sometimes  it  can  be  managed 
—to  see  the  less  frequented  parts  of  Europe 
first,  say  Sicily  or  southern  Italy,  Greece  or  the 
neighbouring  lands — I  dare  say  Spain  would  also 
serve  the  turn,  but  I  cannot  speak  of  Spain 
from  my  own  knowledge — then  to  see  the  more 
familiar  lands  of  Italy,  Germany,  or  France,  and 
to  see  their  own  mother-land  last  of  all.  One 
cannot  expect  many  American  travellers  to  follow 
this  itinerary ;  but  I  believe  that  it  would  have  a 
very  wholesome  effect  on  any  that  would  do  so. 
What  I  spoke  of  in  the  case  of  Normandy  will  now 
come  true  with  tenfold  force.  The  American  who 
sees  England  first  of  all  will  naturally  compare 
England  with  his  own  land,  and  he  will  naturally 
be  most  struck  with  points  of  unlikeness.  If  he 
does  not  see  England  till  he  has  seen  other  lands 
where  the  unlikeness  is  far  deeper,  he  will  be  most 
struck  with  the  points  of  likeness ;  he  will  feel  him 
self  more  thoroughly  at  home  in  the  land  of  his 
fathers.  It  was  not  pleasant  when  I  once  read  in 
an  American  periodical  a  recommendation  to  Ame 
rican  visitors  to  London  to  go  somewhere  or  other 
where  they  would  meet  only  their  own  country 
men,  and  would  thereby  escape  "the  horrible  Eng- 


4.2     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

lisli  intonation."  I  do  not  know  what  "  the  horri 
ble  English  intonation"  is,  and  one  can  hardly  stifle 
the  thought  that  travellers  who  are  so  shocked  at  it 
had  better  keep  on  their  own  side  of  Ocean ;  but  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that,  if  they  had  first  taken  in 
their  fill  of  lands  speaking  altogether  strange 
tongues,  they  might  have  been  glad  to  find  them 
selves  in  a  land  where  their  own  tongue  was  spoken, 
be  the  "  intonation"  of  the  speaker  what  it  may. 

VI. 

With  all  this  interest  and  curiosity  in  English 
matters  which  I  found  on  the  other  side  of  Ocean, 
I  was,  whenever  I  got  beyond  the  very  first  range 
of  American  minds,  often  struck  by  an  amount 
of  ignorance  about  English  matters  which  I  had 
certainly  not  looked  for.  The  ignorance  is  indeed 
largely  mutual,  and  I  am  certain  of  one  thing,  that 
the  average  American  knows  much  more  about  his 
own  country  than  the  average  Englishman  knows 
about  his.  There  certainly  are  plenty  of  people 
in  England  whose  notions  of  American  matters 
are  passing  strange.  There  are,  for  instance, 
not  a  few,  fairly  intelligent  in  many  ways,  who 
seem  quite  unable  to  grasp  the  most  general  out 
line  of  a  Federal  system.  The  relation  between 
the  States  and  the  Union  is  to  them  a  never- 


MUTUAL  IGNORANCE.  43 

ending  mystery.     And  there  are  some  who  seem, 
perhaps  in    speaking   to   an    American  visitor,   to 
have  utterly  failed  to  grasp  how  large  a  stock  of 
knowledge  and  interest  such  a   visitor  must  have 
in  common  with  themselves.     I  have   known   an 
Englishman   think   it   needful   to    explain    to    an 
American  lady  who  Sir  Walter  Scott  was.     Still 
I   must   say— even   at  the   risk  of  being    charged 
with   that   fault   of  "condescension"    which  of  all 
faults   I   most   wish   to   avoid — that   British  igno 
rance    of    America  and    American    ignorance    of 
Britain  do  not  stand  on   the   same   ground.     The 
American  is  really  more  called  on  to  know  about 
British   matters  than  the  Britisher  is  called  on  to 
know   about   American    matters.      And    that    for 
this   obvious   reason,  that    American  matters   can 
not   be   thoroughly    understood    without    constant 
reference     to      British      matters,     while      British 
matters  may  be  thoroughly  understood  with  little 
or  no   reference  to  American  matters.      The  pre 
sent  state  of  things  in  America  implies    the    past 
history    of    America,    and    the    past    history    of 
America   implies   the    past    history    of    England. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  special  history  of  America, 
the   history  of  the  English  folk  in  America  since 
the  separation,  though   it  must  ever  be  an  object 
of  deep  interest  to  all  in  the  mother-land,  is  not  in 


44     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

the   same   way    part   of   the   history  of   the  elder 
England,  nor    is  it  in  the  same   way  needful  for 
understanding   the   history  of  the  elder  England. 
I  hold  then  that  British  ignorance  of  America  is 
more   eisily   to   be  forgiven  than  American  igno 
rance   of   Britain.  •  This   last   is   largely  owing  to 
defective   teaching,  and  I  believe  that  the  defect 
ive  teaching  is   largely  owing  to  a  mistaken  feel 
ing    of   national    self-assertion.      The    warning    of 
Washington    against    meddling    in    the    affairs    of 
Europe  was  politically  most  sound ;  but  Washing 
ton  could   hardly  have  meant  it  to  be  understood 
as     forbidding    all    acquaintance    with    the    past 
history   and  present  state  of  Europe.     There   cer 
tainly  is — I   should  rather  say  there    was — a   ten 
dency   in   some    American    quarters   to  think  and 
speak   as   if   nothing   can    concern    the    American 
people    if    it  be  of   older  date  than  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill,  or,  at  any  rate,  older  than  the  sailing 
of   the   Mayflower.      It   is    doubtless   a   caricature 
when   the  American  child,  when  he  is  asked  who 
was   the   first   man,    is  made    to    answer    George 
Washington,  and  when,  on  another  child  suggest 
ing   Adam   as   a    correction,  the   first    pleads  that 
he   did   not   know    that  he   was  to  take  count  of 
foreigners.     And,  when  it  came  to  this,  the  story 
should  surely  have  gone  on  to  say  that  somebody 


DEFECTS  IN  TEACHING.  45 

named,  not  Adam  but  Adams,  as  the  second  man. 
I  am  told  that  it  is  only  lately  that  English  his 
tory  has  been  at  all  generally  taught  in  any  but 
the  liMiest  American  schools,  and  I  fear  that  it 

?D 

is  still  taught  as  a  thing  apart,  not  as  an  essen 
tial  part  of  the  history  of  the  American  people. 
American  children's  books  are  sure  to  pay  all  due 
honour  to  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and,  if  so  disposed, 
to  Captain  John  Smith  of  Virginia;  but  in  the 
times  before  Smith  and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  they 
are  apt  to  dwell  more  than  enough  on  red  Indians 
and  mastodons,  and  less  than  enough  on  the  land 
and  people  from  which  Smith  and  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  came.  But  it  is  harder  still  when  the  land 
from  which  they  came  is  passed  by,  and  the  rest  of 
the  elder  lands  are  acknowledged.  A  Chicago  peri 
odical  told  a  tale  of  what  followed  when  a  school  of 
girls  was  set  to  draw  a  map  of  Europe.  One  girl 
draws  her  map  according  to  her  own  notions ;  an 
other,  by  way  of  correction,  suggests  that  the  Bri 
tish  islands  are  left  out.  The  schoolmistress  rebukes 
the  interference  of  the  critic ;  she  had  not  said  that 
there  was  any  need  to  put  in  islands.  The  mortified 
Britisher  might  thus  at  least  have  the  consolation 
that  Sicily,  Crete,  and  Cyprus  fared  no  better  than 
his  own  island.  This  story  was  told  in  a  review  of 
Mr.  Green's  "  Making  of  England,"  a  book  which 


46     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

the  Chicago  writer  hoped  might  do  something  to 
improve  this  state  of  things.  But,  more  seriously, 
I  was  struck,  often  in  quarters  where  I  should  hardly 
have  looked  for  it,  with  what  seemed  to  me  a  strange 
ignorance  of  English  matters,  especially  of  English 
geography.  I  was  amazed,  for  instance,  to  be 
asked  whether  Lincolnshire  was  on  the  west  side  of 
England  or  the  east — to  be  asked,  and  that  by  a 
scholar  of  oecumenical  fame,  in  what  part  of  Eng 
land  Northamptonshire  lay — and,  cruellest  of  all,  to 
be  asked  in  very  intelligent  company  whether  the 
county  of  Somerset  was  called  from  the  dukes  of 
Somerset.  That  was  indeed  an  unkind  blow  to  an 
immemorial  Teutonic  gd,  to  fancy  it  called  after 
some  Seymour  of  yesterday,  or  even  after  one  of 
the  somewhat  older  Beauforts.*  I  need  not  say 
that  Madison  County,  Tompkins  County,  and  the 
like,  was  what  was  in  the  speaker's  mind.  Now  I 
shall  of  course  be  asked  whether  an  Englishman  on 
the  same  level  would  know  any  more  of  the  geogra 
phy  of  America  And  I  will  say  beforehand  that, 
if  I  have  been  amazed  in  America  at  ignorance 
of  the  geography  of  England,  I  have  often  been 

*  I  cannot  help  putting  on  record,  as  one  of  the  curiosities  of 
criticism,  that  a  New  York  paper  fancied  that  what  I  com 
plained  of  in  telling  this  story  was  "ignorance  of  the  history 
of  an  English  ducal  family." 


AMERICAN  IGNORANCE  OF  ENGLAND.       47 

just  as  much  amazed  in  England  at  the  ignorance  of 
the  geography  of  continental  Europe.  But  as  for 
English  knowledge  of  American  geography,  it  seems 
to  me  that  a  decently  educated  Englishman  ought 
to  know  the  position  of  great  and  renowned  States 
like  Virginia  and  Massachusetts,  but  that  he  may 
be  forgiven  for  knowing  very  little  about  Arizona 
and  Colorado,  beyond  the  fact  that  they  lie  a  long 
way  west  of  Virginia  and  Massachusetts.  But  then 
all  England,  every  corner  of  it,  is,  not  as  Arizona 
and  Colorado,  but  as  Virginia  and  Massachusetts, 
and  something  more.  For  no  part  of  Britain  or  of 
Europe  looks  to  Virginia  or  Massachusetts  as  a 
mother-land.  But  every  corner  of  England  is,  or 
may  prove  to  be,  the  parent  or  the  metropolis  of 
this  or  that  corner  of  America.  The  Federal  capi 
tal  bears  the  name  of  the  patron  hero,  and  the 
patron  hero  bore  the  name  which  his  forefathers 
took  from  one  or  other  of  the  obscure  Washingtons 
in  England.  Such  an  instance  as  this  is  typical.  I 
think  we  may  reasonably  expect  an  American  of 
average  thought  and  average  knowledge  to  know 
more  of  English  geography  and  of  everything  Eng 
lish  than  we  can  expect  the  Britisher  on  the  same 
level  to  know  of  American  matters,  or  than  we  can 
expect  men  of  different  European  nations  to  know 
of  each  other's  lands.  In  none  of  the  other  cases  is 


48     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

the  land  wliich  a  man  knows  or  of  which  he  is  ig 
norant  the  direct,  obvious,  acknowledged,  cradle  of 
his  own  people. 

I  have  to  put  in  some  modifying  adjectives, 
lest  I  should  be  met  with  an  answer  out  of  my 
own  mouth.  In  England  I  have  ever  preached 
the  lesson  "antiquam  exquirite  matrem,"  while  in 
America  I  have,  at  the  expense  of  metre,  preached 
it  in  the  shape  of  "  antiquiorem  exquirite  matrem." 
I  am  not  likely  to  forget  that,  if  the  English 
settlements  in  America  are  colonies  of  the  English 
settlements  in  Britain,  so  the  English  settlements 
in  Britain  are  themselves  colonies  of  the  older 
English  land  on  the  European  mainland.  In  the 
wider  history  of  the  three  Englands  no  fact  is  of 
greater  moment ;  it  is  in  fact  the  kernel,  almost 
the  essence,  of  their  whole  history.  Still  the 
constant  acknowledgement  and  carrying  about  of 
that  fact  is  a  kind  of  counsel  of  perfection  wrhich 
every  one  cannot  be  expected  to  bear  in  mind. 
The  analogy  between  the  English  settlement  in 
Britain  and  the  English  settlement  in  America  is 
real,  but  it  is  hidden.  The  points  of  unlikeness 
lie  on  the  surface.  The  far  longer  time  of  separa 
tion  between  the  first  England  and  the  second, 
the  consequences  following  on  that  longer  separa 
tion,  above  all  the  far  wider  break  in  the  matter 


THE  THREE  ENGLANDS.  49 

of  language  and  institutions — to  say  nothing  of 
the  original  diversity  in  date  and  circumstances 
between  the  settlements  of  the  sixth  century  and 
the  settlements  of  the  seventeenth — all  these 
things  join  together  to  make  the  relations  between 
the  first  England  and  the  second  altogether  unlike 
the  relations  between  the  second  England  and  the 
third.  The  oldest  England  on  the  European  con 
tinent  should  never  be  forgotten  by  the  men  of 
the  middle  England  in  the  isle  of  Britain.  But 
it  never  can  be  to  them  all  that  the  middle  England 
in  the  isle  of  Britain  surely  ought  to  be  to  the  men 
of  the  newest  England  on  the  mainland  of  America. 

VII. 

The  main  ties  between  the  mother-country  and 
her  great  colony  are  those  which  are  always  likely 
to  be  the  main  results  of  community  of  stock; 
that  is,  community  of  language  and  community 
of  law.  I  will  speak  first  of  language.  And  here 
I  must  fall  back  on  my  former  saying,  what  some 
think  my  former  paradox,  that  the  difference 
between  England  and  Scotland  seemed  to  me 
greater  than  the  difference  between  England  and 
America.  I  may  add  that  the  difference  in  each 
case  is,  to  a  great  extent,  a  difference  of  the  same 
kind.  And  here  I  must  venture  on  a  further 


50     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

paradox.  The  difference  between  Scotland  and 
England  and  the  difference  between  America  and 
England  is,  I  hold,  largely  owing  to  the  fact  that 
both  Scotland  and  America  are  in  many  things 
more  English  than  England  itself.  This  is  above 
all  things  true  in  the  matter  of  language.  Peo 
ple  talk  of  "  Americanisms"  and  of  "  Scotticisms," 
as  if  they  were  in  all  cases  corruptions,  or  at 
all  events  changes,  introduced  by  Americans  and 
Scotsmen  severally  into  the  existing  English  tongue. 
Now  I  do  not  deny  that  there  are  a  good  many 
"  Americanisms"  and  a  few  "  Scotticisms"  which 
really  answer  that  definition.  But  I  maintain 
that  the  great  mass  of  both  classes  come  under 
quite  another  head.  What  people  commonly  call 
an  "  Americanism"  or  a  "  Scotticism"  is,  for  the 
more  part,  -some  perfectly  good  English  word  or 
phrase,  which  has  gone  out  of  use  in  England, 
but  which  has  lived  on  in  America  or  in  Scotland. 
To  take  two  very  obvious  instances,  most  people, 
I  feel  sure,  would  call  ~bairn  a  Scotch  word  ;  most 
people,  I  feel  sure,  would  call/rtZZ,  in  the  sense  of 
autumn,  not  indeed  an  American  word,  but  an 
American  use  of  the  word.  It  almost  seems  as 
if  they  believed  that  the  use  of  the  word  bairn 
in  any  sense,  and  the  use  of  the  word  fall  in  that 
particular  sense,  was  something  that  the  Scots  and 


AMERICANISMS  AND  SCOTTICISMS.          51 

the  Americans  severally  had  devised  of  their  own 
hearts,  and  in  which  England  never  had  any  share 
at  any  time.     Yet  nothing   is   more   certain  than 
that  bairn  is  Scotch  only  in  the  sense  that  it  has 
gone   out   of  use  in  England,  but  has  lived  on  in 
Scotland.      West-Saxon    Alfred    talks    about     his 
"  bairns,"  while  the  word  would  certainly  not  have 
been  understood  by  any  true  Scottish  Kenneth  or 
Malcolm.     So  it  is  with  "  mickle ;"  so  it  is  with  a 
crowd   of   other  words   which   are   commonly   set 
down  as  "Scotch,"  but  which  are  not,  except   in 
modern  usage,  even  distinctly  Northern.     Fall,  in 
the  particular  sense  of  autumn,  is,  in  the  like  sort, 
American  only  in  the  sense  that  it  has  lived  on  in 
America  while  it  has  gone  out  of  use  in  England. 
Or   one   should  rather   say  only  that  it  has   gone 
out   of  use  in   high-polite   speech   in  England.     I 
can  distinctly  remember  the   phrase  "spring  and 
fall "  in  my  childhood,  and  the  good  old  word  still 
abides  in   the   popular   speech   of   many   districts, 
perhaps   of  all.     So  does  "  rare,"  in  the   sense  of 
underdone  meat,  a  sense  which  has  nothing  what 
ever  to  do  with  Latin  "  rarus."     When  I  first  heard 
it   in    the    American    use   it    really   puzzled   me, 
but   I   was    presently   ashamed    to    learn  that   it 
was   to  be  daily  heard  on  the  lips  of  my  nearest 
neio-hbours.     "Scotch"     in    common    talk    never 


52     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

means  the  Gaelic  speech  of  the  true  Scots ;  the 
word  always  means  the  speech  of  that  part  of 
Northern  England  which  came  under  the  rule  of 
the  kings  of  the  true  Scots.  The  English  of  that 
district  was  naturally  less  affected  than  Southern 
English  by  the  Norman  and  French  influences  of 
the  eleventh,  twelfth,  and  thirteenth  centuries. 
It  therefore  keeps  a  crowd  of  good  and  strong 
English  words  which  have  dropped  out  of  use 
in  Southern  English.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
later  connexion  between  France  and  Scotland, 
and  the  respect  shown  in  Scotland  to  the  Roman 
law,  have  brought  in  a  good  many  French  and 
Latin  words  which  are  unknown  in  Southern 
English.  Thus  the  Northern  and  Southern  forms 
of  English  parted  asunder,  and  the  speakers  of  the 
Southern  form  have  come  to  apply  the  name 
"  Scotch"  not  only  to  the  really  distinctive  charac 
teristics  of  the  Northern  form,  but  to  those  cases 
in  which  something  which  was  once  common  to 
both  forms  has  lived  on  in  the  Northern  form  only. 
Something  of  the  same  kind  has  happened  to 
the  English  language  as  spoken  in  the  United 
States.  In  the  matter  of  language,  as  in  most 
other  matters,  the  United  States  have  followed  the 
usual  law  of  colonies.  A  colony  is  always  exposed 
to  two  opposite  tendencies,  which,  though  opposite, 


CONSERVATIVE  ELEMENTS.  53 

are  found  not  uncommonly  to  work  busily  side  by 
side.    There  is  a  greater  tendency  to  stand  still,  and 
there  is  also  a  greater  tendency  to  go  ahead,  than 
there  is  in  the  mother-country.     A  colony  which 
has  no   chance   of   going  ahead  is  likely  to  stand 
very  still  indeed,  much  stiller  than  an  old  country. 
A   small  isolated   colony,   say   a    small    island,    is 
likely  to  become  one  of  the  most  old-world  places 
that  can  be.     It  will  in  many  things  keep  on  the 
state    of    things    which   existed    in     the   mother- 
country  at  the  time  of  the  settlement,  long   after 
that   state   of  things   has,   in  the   mother-country 
itself,  become  a  thing  of  the  past.     It  has  become 
a  proverb  that,  if  you  wish  to  see  old  France,  you 
must    go    to    French   Canada.      And    for    many 
things,  if  you  wish  to  see  old  England,  you  must 
go   to  New   England.     In   the   United  States  the 
tendency  to  go  ahead  has  certainly  reached  as  great 
a  development  as  in  any  part  of  the  world ;  but  it 
has  by  no  means  driven  out  the  opposite  tendency 
to  stand  still.     I  need  not  say  that  I  noticed  many 
things  in  which  our  kinsfolk  beyond  the  Ocean  had 
—sometimes,   I    thought,  for  good,    sometimes,    I 
thought,   for    evil— left    us   behind.      But    I    also 
noticed   some   things   in    which   they    had— some 
times,     I     thought,     for     good,     sometimes     for 
evil— lagged  behind  us.     There  is  a  vast    deal  of 


54     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

conservative  feeling,   or  at   least   of  conservative 
habit,  at  work  in  the  United  States,  at  any  rate  in 
the  older  States.     There  is  much  about  them  in 
speech,   in  manners,  in  institutions,  which    has  a 
thoroughly  old-world  character,  much  that  has  lived 
on  from  the  England  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
much   in  which  the  circumstances   of  the    settlers 
called   back   into  being  things  far  older   than  the 
England  of  the  seventeenth  century.     In  short,  ac 
cording   to  the  general  doctrine  with  which  I  set 
out,  when  anything  that  seems  strange  to  a  British 
visitor  in  American  speech  or  American  manners  is 
not  quite  modern  on  the  face  of  it,  it  is  pretty  cer 
tain  to  be  something  which  was  once  common  to 
the  older  and  the  newer  England,  but  which  the 
newer  England  has  kept,  while  the  older  England  has 
cast  it  aside.     And  it  is  not  very  hard  to  distinguish 
between  usages  which  have  this  venerable  sanction 
and  usages  which  have  come  in  only  yesterday.     It 
does  not  need  any  very  great  effort  to  discern  be 
tween  words,  phrases,  ways  of  looking  at  things, 
which  have  been  handed  on  from  the  days  of  John 
Smith   of  Virginia  or  Roger  Williams  of   Rhode 
Island,  and    words,    phrases,  ways    of   looking   at 
things,  which  have  come  in  under  the  reign  of  the 
stump-orator,  the  interviewer,  and  that  deadliest  of 
all  foes  to  the  English  tongue  and  to  every  other 
tongue,  the  schoolmaster. 


SCOTTISH  AND  AMERICAN  SPEECH.         55 

I   have    drawn    a    parallel  between  the  Scottish 
and   the  American  forms  of  English;   but  it  is  a 
parallel  which   is  far  from  holding  good  in  every 
point.      The    Scottish— that    is,   the     Northern- 
form  of  English  is,  in  the  strictest  sense,  a  dialect. 
That   is  to  say,  it  is  an  independent  form  of  the 
language,    which    might    have    come   to    set    the 
standard  of  the  language  and  to  become  the  polite 
and   literary   speech,   instead    of  that  form  of  the 
language   to   which  that  calling  actually  fell.     Or 
rather,  as  long  as  Scotland  was  politically  distinct 
from  the  southern  England,  the  Northern  form  of 
English   actually   did   set    the   standard  within  its 
own  range.     It  was  the  polite  and  literary  speech 
within  the  English-speaking  lands  of  the  Scottish 
kings.     It  is  only  the  political  union  of  the  king 
doms  which  has  brought  Northern  English  down 
from     that    place   of     dignity,     and     has    caused 
Southern  English   to    set    the   standard  of  speech 
through  the   whole   of  Great  Britain.     Whatever 
a  Scotsman   may   speak,  he  now  writes    after  the 
manner   of    a    southern    Englishman.      But     the 
Englishman   of  America  does  not  write— he  is  in 
no   way   called   on  to  write — after  the  manner  of 
the    Englishman    of   Britain,  but   after   his    own 
manner.     For  his   manner  of  speech,  however  it 
may  differ  from  the  speech  of  the  Englishman  of 


56     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Britain,   does    not    differ   as    a    dialect  strictly  so 
called.     And  this  is  none  the  less  true,  though  it 
is   quite   certain  that  several    dialects    of    English 
are  spoken  in  America.    Some  Americans,  specially 
curious    in    such    matters,  profess  to  mark   some 
difference  of  speech  in  almost  every  State,  and  to 
be   able   in  most   cases    to  say  from  what  State  a 
man   comes.     To   this   amount   of    discernment    I 
naturally  can  make  no  claim ;  but  I  can  see  some 
marked  points  of  difference  between  the  speech  of 
the    Northern    and     Southern    States,    taken     as 
wholes.     And  I  can  further  see  that  the  speech  of 
Virginia  agrees  in  some  points  with  the  speech  of 
Wessex,  points  in  which  it  differs  from  the  speech 
of  either  Boston.     Thus,  for  instance,  the  surname 
Carter — a  surname  which  to   us  does  not    sound 
specially  patrician,  but  which  in  Virginia  is  reck 
oned  to  be  at  least  as  noble  as  Berkeley,  if  not  as 
Montmorency — is  locally  sounded  Eyartah.     Now 
if  the  utterance  of  the  latter  half  of  the  word  may 
seem  to  be  that  of  a  London  lounger,  the  utterance 
of  the  former  half  is  genuine  West-Saxon,  whether 
of  the  days  of  Alfred  or  the  days  of  Victoria.     But 
if  we  come  to  compare  the  English  of  the  United 
States  as  a  whole  with  the  English  of  Britain  as  a 
whole,  there  is  no  difference  of  dialect  strictly  so 
called  between  them.     There  is  not  the  same  kind 


DIALECT  AND  LOCAL    U8AQE.  57 

of  difference  which  there  is  between  the  English  of 
the  Northern  and  Southern  parts  of  Britain  itself. 
The  test  seems  to  lie  in  the  fact  which  I  have  just 
spoken  of.  The  speaker  of  Northern  English  finds 
it  needful  to  adopt,  for  certain  purposes,  the  South 
ern  form  of  English,  instead  of  that  which  is  natu 
ral  to  him.  But  no  American  speaker  or  writer 
ever  thinks  it  needful  to  adopt  the  British  form  of 
his  own  language,  any  more  than  a  British  speaker 
or  writer  thinks  it  needful  to  adopt  the  American 
form. 

And  yet 'it  is  perfectly  plain  that  the  English 
tongue  common  to  Britain  and  America  is  not 
spoken  and  written  in  exactly  the  same  way  in 
Britain  and  in  America.  The  man  of  either  land 
carries  with  him  marks  characteristic  of  his  own 
land  which  will  not  fail  to  bewray  him  to  men  of 
the  other  land.  But  those  marks  are  not  of  the 
nature  of  dialectic  difference  strictly  so  called.  I 
told  my  American  hearers,  in  some  of  the  lectures 
which  I  gave  in  several  places,  that  between  them 
and  us  I  could  see  no  difference  of  language,  no 
difference  of  dialect,  but  that  there  was  a  consider 
able  difference  of  local  usage.  Now  local  usage  in 
matter  of  speech,  whether  it  be  of  old  standing  or 
of  quite  modern  origin,  is  altogether  another  thing 
from  real  difference  of  dialect.  Difference  of  dia- 


58     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

lect  is  a  matter  which  lies  pretty  much  beyond  the 
control  of  the  human  will.  It  is  often  unconscious, 
it  is  almost  always  involuntary ;  if  any  reason  can 
be  given  for  the  difference,  it  is  a  reason  which 
does  not  lie  on  the  surface,  but  which  needs  to  be 
found  out  by  philological  research.  But  mere  local 
usage,  though  it  may  have  become  quite  immemo 
rial,  is  not  thus  wholly  beyond  our  own  control. 
There  is  something  conscious  about  it,  something 
at  any  rate  which  can  be  changed  by  an  immediate 
act  of  the  will.  For  mere  difference  of  local  usage  in 
language  we  can  often  give  some  very  obvious  rea 
son  which  needs  no  philological  research  at  all.  For 
instance,  what  we  may  call  the  language  of  railways 
is  largely  different  in  England  and  in  America. 
But  this  is  no  difference  of  dialect,  only  difference 
of  local  usage.  In  each  case  a  particular  word  has 
been  chosen  rather  than  another.  In  each  case  the 
word  which  has  been  chosen  sounds  odd  to  those 
who  are  used  to  the  other.  In  each  case  we  can 
sometimes  see  the  reason  for  the  difference  of 
usage-,  and  sometimes  not.  ~No  obvious  reason  can 
be  given  why  in  England  we  speak  of  the  "rail 
way"  while  in  America  they  commonly  speak  of 
the  "  nSkroad?  But  no  one  on  either  side  can 
have  the  least  difficulty  in  understanding  the  word 
which  is  used  on  the  other  side.  And  indeed  the 


RAIL  WA  T  LANG  UAGE.  59 

American  may  say  that,  in  this  as  in  some  greater 
and  older  matters,  he  has  stuck  to  the  older  usage. 
Though  "  railroad"  is  now  seldom  used  in  England, 
my  own  memory  tells  me  that  it  was  the  more  usual 
name  when  the  thing  itself  first  came  in.     "  Kail- 
way"  for  what  reason  I  know  not,  has  displaced 
"railroad"  in  England,  and  it  is  worth  remarking 
that  it  is  doing  the  same  in  some  parts  of  America. 
Here  one  can  see  no  reason  for  one  usage  rather 
than  the  other,  and   no   advantage   in  one   usage 
rather  than  the  other.     But  when  the  American 
goes  on  to  speak,  as  he  often  does,  of  the  railroad 
simply  as  "  the  road,"  his  language  may  sometimes 
be  a  little  misleading,  but  it  is  easy  to  see  the  rea 
son  for  it.     In  England  we  had  everywhere  roads 
before   we  had   railroads;    the   railroad   needed   a 
qualifying  syllable  to  distinguish  it  from  the  older 
and  better  known  kind  of  road.     But  in  a  large 
part  of  America  the  railroad  is  actually  the  oldest 
road ;  there  is  therefore  no  such  need  to  distinguish 
it  from  any  other.     To  us  this  seems  rather  like  a 
state  of  things  in  which  printing  should  be  familiar, 
but  writing  unknown;   but  it  is  a  state  of  things 
which  the  circumstances  of  our  time  have  brought 
about  in  a  large  part  of  the  United  States.     That  is 
to  say,  the  two  tendencies  of  which  I  spoke  have 
been  at  work  side  by  side.     The  tendency  to  lag 


60     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

behind  has  hindered  the  growth  of  a  good  system 
of  roads ;  the  tendency  to  go  ahead  has  brought  in 
a  gigantic  system  of  railroads.  Here  we  see  the 
reason  for  the  different  use  of  language.  "We  see 
it  also  in  the  different  names  for  the  thing  which, 
when  the  railroad  is  made,  runs  along  its  rails.  In 
Britain  it  is,  at  least  in  the  language  of  travellers,  a 
"  carriage ;"  in  America  it  is  a  "  car."  This  at 
least  is  by  no  means  a  distinction  without  a  reason. 
The  different  forms  of  English  railway-carriage 
might  afford  some  curious  matters  for  observation 
to  a  philosopher  of  the  school  of  Mr.  Tylor.  No 
where  can  the  doctrine  of  survivals  be  better 
studied.  The  original  railway-carriage  was  the 
old-fashioned  carriage  or  coach  put  to  a  new  use ; 
the  innovation  lay  in  putting  several  such  carriages 
together.  It  is  only  quite  gradually  that  what  we 
may  call  a  picture  of  the  old  carriage  has  dis 
appeared  from  our  trains.  This  is  as  distinct  a 
survival  as  the  useless  buttons  on  a  modern  coat 
which  once  fastened  up  a  lappet,  helped  to  carry 
a  sword,  or  discharged  some  other  useful  function 
now  forgotten.  And  a  further  survival  remains  in 
technical  speech ;  what  the  traveller  by  railway 
calls  a  "  carriage,"  the  railway  official  still  calls  a 
"  coach."  But  the  American  "  car"  was  not  made 
after  any  such  pattern  as  the  English  coach.  It 


"CAR'*  AND  "DEPOT."  61 

is   strictly  a  "  car ;"  at  any  rate   it  is  quite  unlike 
the  special   meaning   attached  to  the   word  "  car 
riage."     If  anything  other  than  itself  was  present 
to  the  mind  of  the  deviser  of  the  American  car,  it 
was  rather  the  cabin  of  a   steamer  than  any  earlier 
kind  of  carriage ;  and  such  an  origin  is  suggested 
by  the  American   phrase  of  being  "  on   board "  a 
train,   which  I  fancy  is  never  heard  in  England. 
Among  European  things,  the  older  kind  of  Ame 
rican  car  is  most  like  that  which   is  used  on  the 
Swiss   railways,    as   if    there   were   some   kind   of 
federal  symbolism  in  both.    And  now  another  form 
of  the  American  car  is  making  its  way  into  Eng 
land,  and  with  the  thing  the  name  comes  too.     For 
"  car"  then  there  is  a  good  reason ;  but  it  is  hard 
to   see  why  a   railway-station  should   be   called   a 
"  depot."     The  word  "  station"  is  not   etymologi- 
cally  English ;  it  is  therefore  not   so  good  a  name 
as  the  German  lahnhof;  but  it  is  quite  naturalized 
and  familiar,  while   "depot"   is  still  foreign,   and 
hardly  becomes  less  so  by  being  sounded  as  if  it 
were  Italian   and  written   dipo.      But   on   several 
American  railroads  the  name  is  beginning  to  give 
way  to  the  more  reasonable  word  "  station." 

All  these  instances  taken  from  railway  matters 
are  necessarily  very  modern;  I  will  take  another 
which  I  have  no  doubt  is  as  old  as  English  settle- 


62     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

ment  in   America.     In  England  we  use  the  word 
"  shop"  both  for  a  place  where  things  are  made  or 
done  and  for   a   place  where  things  are  sold.     In 
America  the  word  is  confined  to  the  place  where 
things  are  made  or  done,  as  "barber-shop,"  "car 
penter-shop;"    a  place   where  things  are  sold  is  a 
"  store."     Less  old  most  likely,  but  certainly  not  of 
yesterday,    is   the  usage  which  confines  the  name 
"  corn"  to  one  particular  kind  of  corn— that,  name 
ly,  which  we  know  as  "  Indian  corn,"  or  maize.     I 
heard  a  most  distinguished  Englishman — Britisher, 
at  all  events — lecture  to  an  American  audience  on 
the  history  of  the  English  corn-laws ;  and  I  doubted 
in  my  own  mind  whether  all  his  hearers  would  un 
derstand   that   he    was   speaking   of  wheat.     Now 
neither  of  these  forms  of  speech  comes  among  the 
cases   in  which   the  colony  has  kept  on  the  elder 
usage  of  the  mother^country.     This    hardly  needs 
proof  in  the  case  of"  corn."     But  the  narrower  use 
of  that  word  i«  exactly  analogous  to  the  narrower 
use  of  the  word  "  beast "  among  English  graziers, 
and  of  the  word  "  bird  "  among  English  sportsmen. 
In  the  case  of  "  shop,"  the  word  is  perfectly  good 
English  both  in  the  wider  and  in  the  narrower  sense, 
as  it  is  in  a  good  many  other  senses  besides.     But  I 
cannot  find  that  "  store"  was  ever  used  in  England 
in  the  American  sense,  till  it  came  in  quite  lately 


"STORE"  AND' '" BLOCKS."  63 

in  the  case  of  "  co-operative  stores."     But  a  perfectly 
good  reason  for  the  difference   of    usage    can    be 
found  in  some  circumstance  of  early  colonial  life. 
In  the  early  settlements  a  shop  was  really  a  "  store," 
in  a  sense  in  which  it  hardly  is  now  on  either  side 
of  Ocean.     And  the  "co-operative  store"  may  be 
so  called  for   some  reason  of  the  same  kind,  or  it 
may  be  because  the  name  is  thought  to  be  finer,  or 
it  may  be  a  mere  transplantation  of  the  American 
name.     The   "shop"  or    the    "store"  suggests   its 
contents  ;  and  I  dare  say  that  there  is  some  good 
reason,  though  I  do  not  see  it,  why  the  contents  of 
one  particular  kind  of  "  store"  should  be  specially 
called  "dry  goods."     The  contents  of  some  other 
kinds  of  store  seem  to  the  untechnical  mind  to  be 
equally  dry.     But  the  phrase,  however  it  arose,  is 
just  like  our  phrase   "  hardware,"  which  does  not 
take   in   all   things   that   are   in   themselves   hard. 
Then,  again,  I  have  known  some  foolish  Britishers 
mock  at  such  phrases  as  "town  lot,"  "city  lot;" 
but  these  are  perfectly  good  and  natural  names  for 
things  to  which  we  have  nothing  exactly  answering 
in  modern  England.     The  constant  use  of  the  word 
"  block,"  in  showing  a  man  his  way  about  a  town, 
struck  me  at  first  as  odd.     But  it  is  a  perfectly  good 
use.     American  towns  are  built  in  blocks,  in  a  way 
in  which  the  elder  English  towns  are    not.     Yet 


64     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

something  very  like  American  "blocks"  may  be 
seen  in  the  town  of  Winchelsey,  laid  out  for  build 
ing,  but  only  partly  built,  in  the  days  of  Edward  the 
First.  The  «  city  lot"  suggests  the  "  city"  itself,  of 
which  we  certainly  hear  much  more  in  America 
than  in  England.  The  history  of  the  word  "  city"  in 
England  is  rather  strange.  At  some  time  later  than 
Domesday  and  earlier  than  Henry  the  Eighth,  it 
came  to  be  confined  on  one  hand  and  extended  on 
the  other,  so  as  to  take  in  all  places  that  were 
bishops'  sees,  and  no  places  that  were  not.  In 
America  a  "  city"  means  what  we  should  call  a  cor 
porate  town  or  municipal  borough.  But  in  Eng 
land  the  word  "  city"  is  seldom  used,  except  either 
in  rather  formal  speech  or  else  to  distinguish  the 
real  city  of  London  from  the  other  parts  of  the 
"  province  covered  with  houses"  which  in  common 
speech  bears  its  name.  In  America  the  word  "  city" 
is  in  constant  use,  where  we  should  use  the  word 
<(  town,"  even  though  the  place  spoken  of  bears  the 
formal  rank  of  a  city.  I  remember  getting  into 
strange  cross-purposes  with  an  American  gentleman 
who,  in  speaking  of  a  visit  to  London,  went  on 
speaking  of  "  the  city,"  when  he  meant  parts  of  the 
province  covered  with  houses  far  away  from  what  I 
understood  by  that  name.  "  Town,"  in  New  Eng 
land  at  least,  has  another  meaning.  A  "  town"  or 


A    "METROPOLIS."  65 

"  township"  may  contain  a  "  city"  or  it  may  not. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  often  hears  the  phrase 
"down  town,"  even  in  New  York  itself.  New 
York,  by  the  way,  calls  itself  a  "  metropolis ;"  in 
what  sense  of  the  word  it  is  not  easy  to  guess,  as  it 
can  hardly  be  because  it  is,  along  with  Baltimore 
and  several  other  cities,  the  seat  of  a  Eoman  Catho 
lic  archbishopric.  To  take  an  example  from  quite 
another  line  of  life,  I  was  struck  with  the  use  of 
"  first  name"  for  "  Christian  name."  It  may  have 
come  in  out  of  tenderness  to  Baptists  and  Quakers, 
to  say  nothing  of  Jews.  Yet  it  sounds  as  if 
it  were  older;  it  sounds,  so  to  speak,  "pilgrim- 
fatherly  ;"  yet,  if  so,  it  is  not  easy  to  understand, 
as  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  surely  practised  infant 
baptism. 

All  these  are  examples  of  those  differences, 
not  in  language  but  in  the  local  use  of  language, 
which  naturally  grew  up  through  difference  of 
place  and  circumstances.  In  these  there  is  no 
corruption  of  language;  we  can  hardly  say  that 
there  is  any  change  of  language.  There  is  no  real 
dialectic  difference ;  though  some  of  them  have 
thus  much  in  common  with  dialectic  differences 
that  they  have  come  of  themselves  without  any  fixed 
purpose,  even  though  we  often  can,  which  we  can 
not  in  the  case  of  strictly  dialectic  difference,  see 


66     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

why  they  have  come.  It  is  otherwise  when  one 
word  is  used  rather  than  another  tinder  the  notion 
of  its  being  finer.  This  is  plainly  the  case  with 
"depot,"  and  I  suppose  it  is  also  with  "conductor" 
for  "guard."  But  one  cannot  see  either  that  "rail 
road  "  is  finer  than  "  railway,"  or  that  "  railway"  is 
finer  than  "railroad."  If  "store"  may,  from  one 
point  of  view,  be  thought  finer  than  "shop,"  the 
increased  fineness  is  quite  accidental ;  it  is  another 
thing  when  any  man  on  either  side  calls  his  shop  or 
store  his  "establishment."  In  nearly  all  these 
cases  the  difference  matters  nothing:  to  one  whose 

O 

object  is  to  save  some  relics  of  the  good  old  Eng 
lish  tongue.  One  way  is  for  the  most  part  as  good 
as  the  other;  let  each  side  of  the  Ocean  stick  to  its 
own  way,  if  only  to  keep  up  those  little  picturesque 
differences  which  are  really  a  gain  when  the  sub 
stance  is  essentially  the  same.  This  same  line  of 
thought  might  be  carried  out  in  a  crowd  of  phrases, 
old  and  new,  in  which  British  and  American  usage 
differs,  but  in  which  neither  usage  can  be  said  to  be 
in  itself  better  or  worse  than  the  other.  Each  usage 
age  is  the  better  in  the  land  in  which  it  has  grown 
up  of  itself.  A  good  British  writer  and  a  good 
American  writer  will  write  in  the  same  language 
and  the  same  dialect ;  but  it  is  well  that  each 
should  keep  to  those  little  peculiarities  of  estab- 


SLANG.  67 

lished  and  reasonable  local  usage  which  will  show 
on  which  side  of  the  Ocean  he  writes. 

On  the  other  hand,  besides  unavoidable  dialectic 
difference,  besides  reasonable  difference  in  local 
usage,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  distinct  abuse  and 
corruption  of  language.  Our  common  tongue  cer 
tainly  suffers  a  good  deal  in  this  way  on  both  sides 
of  the  Ocean.  If  good  English  is  common  to  both 
sides,  bad  English  takes  characteristic  forms  on  each 
side ;  and  unluckily,  each  side  often  finds  it  easier 
to  copy  the  abuses  of  the  other  than  to  stick  to  the 
noble  heritage  which  is  common  to  both.  Each  too 
often  copies  the  slang  of  the  other  side,  both  the 
philosophic  and  the  vulgar  slang.  To  the  former 
class  botli  sides  certainly  contribute ;  "  racial "  I  be 
lieve  is  American  ;  but  "  sociology"  is  undoubtedly 
British.  As  for  purely  vulgar  slang,  it  is  perhaps 
hardly  worth  while  trying  to  find  out  which  land 
outdoes  the  other.  Possibly  the  go-ahead  side  of 
the  younger  English  land  may  have  won  for  it  the 
first  place.  Or  it  may  merely  be  that  slang  comes 
to  the  front  in  America  in  some  ways  that  it  does 
not  in  England.  Newspaper  language  in  England 
has  certainly  fallen  very  low ;  still  English  news 
papers  of  any  position  do  not  indulge  in  mere  slang 
in  the  same  way  as  the  American  papers  which  most 
nearly  answer  to  them.  But  I  do  not  think  that  a 


68     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

cultivated  American  gentleman  deals  more  in  slang 
than  a  British  gentleman  of  the  same  class.  And 
after  all,  it  is  not  easy  to  define  slang,  though 
we  commonly  know  it  when  we  hear  it.  Slang, 
I  should  think,  was  always  conscious  in  its  ori 
gin.  A  word  or  phrase  is  used,  not  unconscious 
ly  under  the  natural  compulsion  of  some  good 
reason  for  its  use,  but  consciously,  indeed  of  set 
purpose,  because  it  is  thought  to  sound  fine  or 
clever.  It  presently  comes  to  be  used  by  crowds  of 
people  as  a  matter  of  course,  without  any  such 
thought ;  but  its  origin  sticks  to  it ;  it  remains 
slang;  it  never  becomes  the  true  yoke-fellow  of 
words  and  phrases  which  have  grown  up  of  them 
selves  as  they  were  really  needed.  Or  again,  there 
may  be  a  word  or  phrase  which  is  good  enough  in 
its  turn  with  others,  but  which,  if  used  constantly 
to  the  exclusion  of  others,  seems  to  partake  of  the 
nature  of  slang.  Some  favourite  American  forms  of 
speech  seem  to  us  in  this  way  to  savour  of  slang,  and 
I  believe  that  some  favourite  British  forms  of  speech 
in  the  like  sort  savour  of  slang  to  an  American.  To 
take  a  very  small  example,  perhaps  the  better  be 
cause  it  is  so  very  small,  the  word  "  certainly"  is  a 
very  natural  form  of  granting  any  request ;  but  in 
England  we  should  hardly  use  it  except  in  granting 
a  request  of  some  little  importance,  or  one  about 


AMERICAN  USES  OF  SOME   WORDS.          69 

tlie  granting  of  which  there  might  be  some  little 
donbt ;  American  use  extends  it  to  the  very  small 
est  civilities  of  the  table.  In  the  same  way  there 
are  American  uses  of  the  words  "like"  and  "  be 
lieve"  which  to  us  seem  odd.  I  have  heard  a  man, 
when  offered  some  small  matter  of  meat  or  drink, 
say  that  he  believed  he  could  not  take  any.  But  I 
am  not  sure  that  this  is  slang ;  and  the  peculiar  use 
of  "  like"— "  I  felt  like  to  do  it,"  meaning,  « I  felt 
a  wish  or  a  call  to  do  it"— is  itself  like  to  be  good 
usage  and  not  slang.  To  "  loan,"  as  a  verb,  has  to 
us  a  strange  sound,  and  the  verb  "  to  rent"  seems  to 
be  used  in  exactly  the  opposite  meaning  to  what  it 
bears  in  England.  But  "  loan,"  though  an  abuse  of 
speech,  is  not  exactly  slang,  and  "  rent"  may  refer 
to  some  point  of  usage.  But  "I  guess"  I  have 
always  stood  up  for,  as  a  perfectly  good  form,  if 
only  it  is  not  always  used  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
forms.  "  I  reckon"  is  as  good  English  as  English 
can  be  ;  it  is  only  at  "  I  calculate"  that  one  would 
begin  to  kick ;  but  I  do  not  think  that  "  I  calculate" 
is  often  heard  in  the  kind  of  American  society  to 
which  I  was  used.  It  might,  however,  be  taken  as 
an  instance  of  the  way  in  which  technical  and  special 
words  get  into  common  use,  sometimes  on  one  side 
of  the  Ocean,  sometimes  on  the  other,  and  which 
seem  odd  to  those  who  are  not  used  to  them.  Let 


70     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES, 

me  tell  an  Oxford  tale  of  perhaps  five-and-thirty 
years  ago.  A  story  was  told  in  a  common-room  of 
an  American  clergyman  who  was  in  the  habit  of 
getting  into  theological  discussions  with  his  bishop, 
and  who  was  sometimes  a  little  puzzled  as  to  the 
way  in  which  he  ought  to  behave  in  such  cases 
towards  his  spiritual  superior.  "  I  had  a  respect  for 
his  office,"  said  the  presbyter ;  "  but  I  did  not  like 
to  endorse  all  that  he  said."  A  fit  of  laughter 
went  round  the  room.  Thirty-five  years  ago  there 
seemed  something  irresistibly  ludicrous  in  applying 
a  commercial  word  like  "  endorse"  to  agreement  or 
disagreement  on  a  theological  matter.  I  am  quite 
sure  that  no  one  would  laugh  at  it  now  either  in 
America  or  in  Britain ;  we  all  endorse,  or  decline 
to  endorse,  positions  on  all  questions,  theological, 
political,  philosophical,  or  any  other.  But  I  doubt 
whether  any  one  in  England  would  talk  of  "  the 
balance  of  the  day,"  a  phrase  which  I  have  heard 
of  in  America,  though  I  should  doubt  its  being 
common.  Purely  legal  phrases,  too,  seem  to  get 
more  easily  into  common  use  in  America  than  here, 
and  I  am  told  that  the  same  is  the  case  with  medi 
cal  phrases  also.  I  was  a  good  deal  amazed  at  first 
to  see  "  Eeal  Estate,"  "  Keal  Estate  Office,"  written 
up  as  the  mark  of  a  place  of  business.  I  knew  my 
Blackstone  well  enough  to  have  no  difficulty  as  to 


LOCAL  NOMENCLATURE.  71 

what  was  meant ;  but  it  looked  to  me  very  much  as 
if  somebody  had  advertised  a  "Jetsam  and  Flotsam 
Office."  But  I  presently  found  that  "  real  estate," 
"  to  buy  real  estate,"  were  phrases  in  daily  use,  both 
in  the  newspapers  and  in  common  talk.  Now  cer 
tainly  no  one  in  England  would,  if  a  man  had 
bought  houses  or  lands,  say  that  he  had  bought 
"  real  estate."  We  should,  if  we  did  not  define  the 
particular  thing  bought,  be  more  likely  to  veil  it 
under  the  general  name  of  "  property." 

The  names  of  things  lead  not  unnaturally  to  the 
names  of  places.  The  art  of  naming  places,  like 
the  art  of  making  prayers,  seems  to  be  one  of  the 
lost  arts.  In  an  old  country  there  is  but  little  room 
for  its  exercise ;  and,  when  we  do  make  an  attempt, 
our  attempts  are  seldom  lucky.  In  a  new  country 
it  has  to  be  tried  every  day.  I  was  going  to  say 
that  in  the  United  States  the  art  had  steadily  gone 
down  ;  and  so  for  a  long  time  it  certainly  did ;  but 
I  am  not  sure  that  the  worst  is  not  past.  In  an  ex 
tempore  discourse  which  I  was  called  on  to  give  on 
"Washington's  birthday,  I  tried  to  show  how  much 
of  American  history  a  man  versed  in  European  his 
tory,  but  knowing  nothing  of  America,  might  make 
out  by  simply  noting  the  local  nomenclature  along 
the  Eastern  coast.  He  would  see,  from  names  like 
Boston,  Plymouth,  Bristol,  and  a  crowd  of  others, 


72     ntPBE88ION8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

that  the  land  had  been  mainly  colonized  from  Eng 
land.  But  names  like  Haarlem  and  Staten  Island, 
even  if  he  did  not  light  on  the  fact  that  New  York 
had  once  been  New  Amsterdam,  would  teach  him 
that  there  had  been  settlements  from  the  Nether 
lands  also.  Among  the  English  names,  he  might 
make  guesses,  right  or  wrong,  as  to  the  reasons  why 
the  names  of  such  and  such  English  places  were  re 
produced.  Boston  would  most  likely  put  him  on 
a  right  scent  and  Plymouth  on  a  wrong  one. 
Names  like  Charles  River,  James  Town,  Maryland, 
Carolina,  might  help  him  to  the  general  date  of  the 
settlements.  And,  once  put  on  this  tack,  he  might 
possibly  even  be  led  to  make  some  inferences  from 
n  comparison  between  the  nomenclature  of  the 
northern  and  of  the  southern  parts  of  the  land 
which  he  was  surveying.  He  might  remark  that 
names  taken  from  royal  personages  in  Europe  are 
much  thicker  in  the  South,  while  in  the  North  he 
would  come  across  more  names  of  that  peculiar 
character  of  which  Salem  and ,  Providence  are  ex 
amples.  He  might  not  unfairly  guess  that  this 
difference  betokened  something  as  to  the  political 
and  religious  character  of  the  different  settlements. 
He  might  not  unreasonably  hold  that  he  had  lighted 
on  Cavaliers  at  one  end  and  on  Puritans  at  the 
other.  And,  in  the  land  between  the  two,  he 


WASHINGTON.  73 

might  guess  that  such  a  name  as  Philadelphia  was 
not  given  without  a  reason.  And  that  reason  could 
hardly  be  that  the  American  Philadelphia  stood  to 
Philadelphia  in  Asia  in  the  same  relation  in  which 
the  American  Boston  and  Haarlem  might  reason 
ably  be  thought  to  stand  to  Boston  and  Haarlem  in 
Europe.  But  what  would  he  make  of  the  name  of 
the  federal  capital?  Boston,  Haarlem,  Plymouth, 
Bristol,  are  all  places  after  which  younger  settle 
ments  might  reasonably  be  called.  But  why  should 
anybody  call  any  place,  above  all  why  should  any 
body  call  the  capital  of  a  great  confederation,  after 
places  so  utterly  obscure  as  either  of  the  Washing- 
tons  of  the  old  world  ?  I  really  think  that  an  in 
genious  man  might  hit  on  the  true  explanation 
without  any  knowledge  of  the  fact.  Many  places 
are  called  after  men,  and  many  men  are  called  after 
places.  It  would  really  be  a  natural  inference  that 
a  place-name  otherwise  so  hard  to  account  for  as 
that  of  Washington  was  due  to  the  place  being 
called  in  honour  of  a  man  who  had  the  good  luck  to 
bear  the  name  of  one  of  the  older  and  less  famous 
Washingtons  in  the  mother-land. 

I  say  "good  luck,"  because  it  was  good  luck 
indeed  that  the  father  of  his  country  bore  the  honest 
name  of  an  English  village,  keeping  on  the  memory 
of  a  Teutonic  gens  and  its  eponymous  hero.  Fancy 


74     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

if  the  first  President  had  borne  the  name  of  the 
second  or  of  the  third,  or  indeed  of  any  of  his 
successors  till  the  name  of  Lincoln  became  more 
famous  as  the  name  of  one  of  the  leaders  of  men 
than  it  had  ever  been  as  the  name  of  an  illustrious 
Roman  and  Danish  city.  I  could  not  venture  to 
carry  my  imaginary  inquirer  far  from  the  Eastern 
coast.  His  stock  of  inferences  would  soon  fail  him  ; 
he  would  soon  be  utterly  puzzled  and  baffled. 
There  is  no  greater  contrast  than  between  the  older 
and  newer  nomenclature  of  American  towns.  The 
older  names  fall  into  three  or  four  rational  and  in 
telligible  classes  which  have  a  history  and  a  mean 
ing.  There  are  the  Indian  names,  whether  names 
of  districts  or  of  particular  places.  Massachusetts 
keeps  its  name  in  the  newer  England,  exactly  as 
Kent  keeps  its  name  in  the  elder  England.  Then 
there  are  the  various  classes  of  English  names, 
names  of  places  in  England,  names  of  persons, 
descriptive  names,  like  Long  Island — fellow  to 
Greek  Makris — and  devotional  names,  answering  to 
the  Poseidonia  and  Artemisia  of  the  Greek,  and  to 
the  Wodensborough,  the  Thundersley,  and  the 
Ereysthorp,  of  the  heathen  days  of  England.  All 
these  are  thoroughly  good  and  reasonable.  And 
equally  good  and  reasonable  are  the  names  which 
have  lived  on  from  the  settlements  of  other  Euro- 


MODERN  AMERICAN  NOMENCLATURE.       75 

pean  nations,  Haarlem,  St..  Louis,  New  Orleans ; 
pity,  I  should  say,  that  New  Amsterdam  and  Fort 
Orange  ever  yielded  to  New  York  and  Albany. 
Only  in  this  last  case  that  very  amusing  book,  "  The 
Memoirs  of  an  American  Lady,"  could  never  have 
given  us  those  vivid  pictures  of  the  manners  and 
customs  of  a  folk  of  "  Albanians"  who  had  no  part 
or  lot  in  Scanderbeg  or  AH  Pasha.  But  alongside 
of  all  these  thoroughly  respectable  and  rational 
names,  what  are  we  to  say  to  the  wild  nomenclature 
of  many  places  of  later  origin  ?  Chicago  indeed 
keeps  its  Indian  name  ;  Springfield  in  Illinois  is  as 
rational  as  Springfield  in  New  England;  Buffalo, 
though  there  is  something  comic  about  the  sound, 
may  be  allowed  to  pass  as  descriptive.  Buffalo, 
according  to  the  teaching  of  zoology,  is  near  akin  to 
Cowbridge,  if  not  to  Oxford,  and  the  form  of  the 
word  did  not  allow  the  ending  to  be  so  easily  added. 
But  what  are  we  to  say  to  those  namers  of  places 
who,  with  such  a  stock  of  good  Teutonic  endings, 
seem  to  have  scorned  them  all,  or  not  to  have 
known  that  they  were  endings  ?  Why,  with  -ton 
and  -lurgh  and  -wick  and  -thorp,  and  Danish  -ly  for 
the  Scandinavian  settlers,  all  to  choose  from— why 
is  French  ville  to  be  stuck  to  the  end  of  plain  Eng 
lish  names  ?  Varietyville  is  at  least  consistent ;  the 
ending  is  not  worse  than  the  beginning ;  it  hangs 


76     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

together  better  than  Mechanicsburg,  where  the  end 
ing  is  so  much  better  than  the  beginning.  But  why 
Westmlle,  when  it  would  have  been  so  easy  to  say 
Weston  or  Westbury  ?  I  confess  that  it  provoked 
me  into  saying  that,  if  I  had  to  coin  a  gentile  for 
the  people  of  "Westville,  I  could  call  them  nothing 
but  the  Westmllains.  Owensborough  and  Evans- 
ville,  not  very  far  apart  on  the  map,  suggest  that  a 
wise  and  a  foolish  Briton  must  have  pitched  their 
tents  in  the  same  quarter  of  the  world.  Why  again 
Whitneymlle,  when  Whitney  is  a  good  place-name 
ready  made  ?  And,  more  fearful  still,  I  believe  it 
is  a  fact  that  the  United  States,  besides  many 
Washington s,  contain  a  Washingtonville.  In  these 
names  given  from  men — for  Whitneyville  was  of 
course  called  from  Whitney  as  a  surname — there  is 
often  a  certain  helplessness.  We  get  Madison, 
Columbus,  even  Adams,  without  any  ending  at  all. 
Or  sometimes  "  city"  is  not  so  much  stuck  on  as  put 
alongside,  as  in  Jefferson  City,  as  if  the  name-givers 
had  been  agglutinative  Turks  or  Huns  who  had  not 
reached  the  art  of  inflexion.  Then,  while  it  is  per 
fectly  reasonable  to  call  an  English  place  Boston,  a 
Dutch  place  Haarlem,  and  a  French  place  New 
Orleans,  no  good  reason  surely  can  be  found  for 
Athens.  Memphis,  Troy,  Cairo,  places  which  cer 
tainly  do  not  claim  a  metropolis  in  any  of  their 


PSEUDO-CLASSICAL  NAMES.  77 

older  namesakes,  and  which  do  not  convey  the  same 
historical   and  moral  lesson  as  Philadelphia.     But 
the  strangest  display  of  all  is  to  be  found  in  a  cer 
tain  district  of  the  State  of  New  York,  over  which 
I  heard  it  wittily  said  that  a  governor  whose  name 
I   have   forgotten  had  shaken  out   his  Lempriere. 
Half  the  cities  of  antiquity  are  reproduced,  and  not 
only  the  cities,  but   the  men.     There  is  not  only 
Ithaca,  now  memorable  as  the  seat  of  a  famous  Uni 
versity  ;  not  far  off  there  is  Ulysses.     Homer,  Ovid, 
and  a  crowd  of  others  appear  on  the  map,  and  in  a 
gathering  of  records    I  saw  the  act  of  the  State 
Legislature  "  for  the  incorporation  of  the  village  of 
Manlius."     "Where  Troy  is,  Borne  does  not  fail  to 
follow;    and   there   is   a   newspaper   called   "The 
Eoman    Sentinel,"    of  which   I   ventured    to   ask 
whether  the  papers  on  the  other  side  ever  spoke  of 
it  as  "the  Goose."     Nor  is  the  founder  of  Eome 
absent;  it  may  even  be  that  some   notion  of  the 
manner  of  life  of  the  true  Koman  peeps  out  in  the 
fact  that  on  the  railroad  the  next  station  to  Romu 
lus  is  Farmer.      In   other  cases  too  there  seemed 
some  approach  to  fitness  in  the  name  chosen.    Ge 
neva  is  at  least  on  a  lake  ;  Syracuse  stands  on  a  bay 
of  a  lake  in  which  I  tried  to  see  some  likeness  to 
the  great  harbor.     Syracuse  indeed  must  have  some 
kind   of  consciousness  of  its  own  being.     As  the 


78     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

elder  Syracuse  on  fitting  days  shouts  loudly  for 
"  Santa  Lucia,"  so  the  younger,  when  I  passed  by  it 
on  October  31,  was  keeping  "  Saint  Lucy's  fair." 
In  the  names  of  counties  it  is  odd  that  the  English 
shire  has,  as  in  Ireland,  so  utterly  given  way  to  the 
French  name.  Where  by  any  chance  it  exists,  it 
seems  not  to  be  understood.  There  is  a  Berkshire 
in  Pennsylvania,  and  its  chief  town  is  Reading; 
but  one  sees  it  spoken  of  as  "  Berkshire  co.,"  as  one 
has  heard  people — not  natives — speak  of  the  Bar- 
gate  at  Southampton.  Even  in  Massachusetts,  one 
has  to  record  the  frightful  fact  that  Norfolk  and 
Suffolk  are  put  the  wrong  way  on  the  map.  Yet 
even  this  is  not  worse  than  when,  nearer  home,  the 
county  of  Tipperary  was  divided  into  ridings  (tri- 
things\  and  the  number  of  them  was  two. 

In  pronunciation  strictly  so  called,  I  mean  the 
utterance  of  particular  words  as  distinguished  from 
any  general  tone,  accent,  intonation,  or  the  like,  I 
remarked  less  difference  between  America  and  Eno-- 

o 

land  than  I  did  in  the  use  of  the  words  themselves. 
Of  certain  dialectic  differences  within  the  United 
States  themselves  I  have  already  said  something. 
When  the  Virginian  says  "  doe"  and  "  floe"  for 
"  door"  and  "  floor,"  it  is  as  truly  a  case  of  dialect 
in  the  strictest  sense  as  the  difference  between  the 


PRONUNCIATION.  79 

dialect  of  Somerset  and  the  dialect  of  Yorkshire. 
But  I  noticed  some  prevalent  differences  of  pro 
nunciation  in  America  which  were  in  no  sense  dia 
lectical,  but  which  were  clearly  adopted  on  a  princi 
ple.     I  fancy  that  something  that  may  be  called  a 
principle  has  more  influence  on   pronunciation  in 
America  than  it  has  in  England.     This  remark  is 
not  my  own  ;  I  found  it,  or  something  to  the  same 
effect,  in  an  American  periodical.     It  was  there  re 
marked  that  in  America  there  is  a  large  class  of 
people  who  read  a  great  deal  without  much  educa 
tion,  and  who  are  apt  to  draw  their  ideas  of  pro 
nunciation  rather  from  the  look  of  the  words  in  the 
book  than  from   any   traditional  way  of  uttering 
them.     One  not  uncommonly  comes  across  people 
of  this  kind  in  England,  and  everything  is  likely  to 
make  the  class  larger  in  America.     This  will  most 
likely  account  for  some  cases,  specially  for  one  on 
which  I  shall  have  something  to  say  presently.    But 
there  are  other  cases  in  which  the  American  usage, 
though  it  sounds  odd  to  a  British  ear,  is  strictly 
according  to  the  analogy  of  the  English  tongue.     I 
heard  in  America  "opponent"  and  "inquiry,"  and 
very  odd  they  sounded.     But  they  simply  follow 
the  English  rule  of  throwing  the  accent  as  far  back 
as  we  can,  without  regard  to  the  Latin  or  Greek 
quantity.      If    we   say   « theatre"-which,   by  the 


80    ixpiussaiom  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

way,  is  accidentally  right,  according  to  the  Greek 
accent—"  auditor,"    "  ablative,"    and    a    crowd   of 
other  words  of  the  same  kind,  we  may  as  well  say 
"opponent"    and    " inquiry."       The    only   reason 
against  so  doing  is,  I  suppose,  that  they  are  a  little 
hard  to  say,  which  is   doubtless   the   reason  why, 
while  everybody  says  "  auditor"  and  "  senator,"  no 
body  says  "  spectator."     But  there  is  one  word  on 
which  I  wish  to  speak  a  little  more  at  large,  as  a 
clear  instance   in  which  the   schoolmaster   or  the 
printed  text  or  some  other  artificial  influence  has 
brought  about  a  distinct  change  in  pronunciation. 
The  word  "  clerk"  is  in  England  usually  sounded 
"dark,"   while  in  America  it  is  usually  sounded 
"  clurk."     I  say  "usually,"  because  I  did  once  hear 
"clurk"  in  England,  and  because  I  am  told  that  in 
some  places  the  sound  is  not  uncommon.     On  the 
other  hand,  I  was  told  at  Philadelphia  that  some 
old  people  there  still  said  "dark,"  and— a  most  im 
portant  fact— that  those  who  said  "dark"  also  said 
"  merchant."     Now  it  is  quite  certain  that  "  dark" 
is  the  older  pronunciation,  the  pronunciation  which 
the  first  settlers  must  have  taken  with  them.     This 

is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  word  as  a  surname 

and  it  is  one  of  the  commonest  of  surnames is 

always    sounded,    and    most    commonly    written, 
"Clark"  or  "Clarke."     In  England  I  believe  this 


"CLKRK"   OR  "CLURK."  81 

spelling  is  universal.     I  suspect  that  "  Clerk"  as  a 
surname,   so   spelled,  is  distinctively  "  Scotch,"  in 
the  modern  sense  of  that  word.     Again,  in  writers 
of  the  sixteenth  and  early  seventeenth  century,  the 
word  itself  is  very  often  written  «  dark"  or  "  clarke." 
But  of  course  "  clerk"  was  at  all  times  the  more 
clerkly  spelling,  as  showing  the  French  and  Latin 
origin  of  the  word.     It  is  plain  therefore  that  the 
pronunciation  "  clurk"   is  not  traditional,  but  has 
been   brought   in   artificially,  out   of   a   notion   of 
making  the  sound  conform  to  the  spelling.     But 
"  clurk"  is  no  more  the  true  sound  than  "  dark ;" 
the  true   sound  is  « clairk,"   like   French  "clerc." 
"Clark"    and    "clurk"    are    both    mere    approxi 
mations  to  the  French  sound,  and  "  dark"  is  the 
older,  and  surely  the  more  natural,  approximation. 
The    Scotsman   who   writes  his   surname  "Clerk" 
assuredly  does  not  call  himself  "  Clwrk,"  any  more 
than  he  follows  us  Southrons  in  degrading  "  Perth" 
into    "P^rth."      The    truth    is    that   we    cannot 
sound  "  clerk"  as  it  is  spelled ;    that  is,  we  cannot 
give   the   e  before   r  the   same   sound  which   we 
give  it   when    it  is  followed    by   any  other    con 
sonant.     We  on  this  side  cannot  do  it  when  r  is 
followed  by  another  consonant;  and  the  not   un 
common  sound  of  "  America"  as  the  name  of  the 
western  continent  seems  to  show  that  there  is  some 


82     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

difficulty  in  sounding  it,  even  when  r  stands  by  it 
self.  We  cannot  sound  e  in  "  clerk"  exactly  as  we 
sound  e  in  "  tent."  This  explains  the  history  of  a 
crowd  of  words,  some  of  Teutonic,  some  of  Latin 
origin,  in  which  the  spelling  is  0,  but  in  which  the 
sound  has,  just  as  in  "  clerk,"  fluctuated  between  a 
and  u.  The  old  people  at  Philadelphia  who  said 
"  dark"  also  said  "  merchant."  And  quite  rightly, 
for  they  had  on  their  side  both  older  English  usage 
and,  in  this  case,  the  French  spelling  itself.  The 
sound  "  merchant"  has  come  in,  both  in  England 

'  o 

and  in  America,  by  exactly  the  same  process  as  that  by 
which  the  sound  "  clwrk"  has  come  in  in  America, 
but  not  in  England.  In  these  cases  the  words  are 
of  Latin  origin  ;  so  is  "  German,"  which  people  used 
to  sound  "  Jarman" — as  in  the  memorable  story  of 
the  Oxford  University  preacher  who  wished  the 
"  Jarman  theology"  at  the  bottom  of  the  "  Jarman 
Ocean."  So  with  a  word  which  easily  connects  it 
self  with  "clerk."  The  Latin  "persona"  became 
natural  English  "  parson,"  while  the  more  philo 
sophical  form  "  person,"  in  its  many  arid  strange 
uses,  is  sounded  as  the  Americans  sound  "  clerk." 
Yet  I  have  always  had  a  feeling  for  the  Irish  girl 
who,  asking  in  a  draper's  shop  for  u  any  article  that 
would  shoot  a  young  parson,"  was  unkindly  referred 
to  a  gunmaker.  But  the  difficulty  is  by  no  means 


"JkRMAN"  AND   "JERSEY."  83 

confined  to  words  which  we  have  borrowed  from 
Latin.     Exactly  the  same  thing  happens  to  a  crowd 
of   Teutonic   proper   names,    as  Derby,   Berkeley, 
Berkshire,  Bernard,  Bertram,  and  others.     In  these 
names  the  original  Old-English  vowel  is  "eo',"  the 
modern  spelling  and  the  different  modern  pronun 
ciations  are  mere  approximations,  just  as  when  the 
vowel  is  the  French  or  Latin  e.     One  has  heard 
"  Darby"  and  "  Dwrby,"  "  Berkeley"  and  "  Berke 
ley  ;"  and  though  the  a  sound  is  now  deemed  the 
more  polite,  yet  I  believe  that  fashion  has  fluctuated 
in   this  matter,  as  in  most  others.     And  fashion, 
whether  fluctuating  or  not,  is  at  least  inconsistent ; 
if  it  is  polite  to  talk  of  "  Berkshire"  and  "Darby," 
it  is  no  longer  polite   to  talk  about  "  Jarman"  and 
"  Jarsey."     But  in  all  these  cases  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  a  sound  is  the  older.     The  names  of 
which  I  have  spoken  are  often  spelled  with  an  a  in 
old  writers ;  and  the  a  sound  has  for  it  the  witness 
of  the  most  familiar  spelling  of  several  of  the  names 
when    used    as    surnames.     "Darby,"    "Barclay," 
"  Barnard,"  "  Bartram,"  all  familiar  surnames,  show 
what  sound  was  usual  when  their  present  spelling 
was  fixed.     Tourists,  I  believe,  talk  of  the  "  Dur- 
went"  (as  they  call  the  Dove  the  "  Duv");  but  the 
Derwent  at  Stamfordbridge  is  undoubtedly  "  Dar- 
went,"  while  the  more  northern  stream  of  the  name 


84     IMPBE88ION8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

is  locally  "  Darwin,"  a  form  wliicli  lias  become  illus 
trious  as  a  surname.  Now  in  words  of  this  kind, 
while  British  use  is  somewhat  fluctuating,  I  believe 
that  America  has  universally  decided  for  the  u 
sound.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  whether  in 
England  or  in  America,  the  sound  of  "  Dwrby"  or 
"  Bertram"  is  simply  an  attempt  to  adapt  the  sound 
to  the  spelling,  while  "  Darby"  and  "  Bertram"  are 
the  genuine  traditional  sounds. 

Again  I  think  I  see  another  instance,  not  quite  of 
the  same  kind,  of  the  influence  of  the  schoolmaster, 
in  the  name  which  in  some  parts  of  America  is 
given  to  the  last  letter  of  the  alphabet.  This  in 
New  England  is  always  zee\  in  the  South  it  is 
zed,  while  Pennsylvania  seems  to  halt  between  two 
opinions.  Now  zed  is  a  very  strange  name.  Has 
it  anything  to  do  with  Greek  zeta  1  or  does  it  come 
from  the  old  form  izzard,  which  was  not  quite  for 
gotten  in  my  childhood,  and  which  I  was  delighted 
to  find  remembered  in  America  also  ?  (Izzard  is 
said  to  be  for  "  s  hard,"  though  surely  z  is  rather  s 
soft).  But  anyhow  zee  is  clearly  a  schoolmaster's 
device  to  get  rid  of  the  strange-sounding  zed,  and  to 
make  z  follow  the  analogy  of  other  letters.  But  the 
analogy  is  wrong.  Z  ought  not  to  follow  the  analo 
gy  of  1},  d,  t,  but  that  of  I,  m,  n,  r,  and  above  all  of 
its  brother  s.  If  we  are  not  to  have  zed,  the  name 


Tllti  "HUMBLE  CONJUNCTION:1  85 

should  clearly  be,  not  zee  but  ez.  But  it  is  a  com 
fort  that,  besides  izzard,  I  also  found  "  ampussy 
and  "—I  hardly  know  how  to  write  it—  remembered 
beyond  the  Ocean,  as  I  find  that  it  is  better  known 
than  I  had  thought  on  this  side  also.  «  Ampussy 
and,"  that  is,  in  full,  "<wd  per  se,  and,"  is  the  name 
of  the  sign  for  the  conjunction  and,  &,  which  used 
to  be  printed  at  the  end  of  the  alphabet.  May  I 
quote  a  riming  nursery  alphabet  of  my  own  child 
hood  ?  The  letters  have  all  done  their  several  ser 
vices  to  the  apple^pV-not,  in  modern  fashion, 
^—  that  was  to  be  divided  among  them  : 


Then  AND  came,  though  not  one  of  the  letters, 
And,  bowing,  acknowledged  them  all  as  his  betters; 
And,  hoping  it  might  not  be  deemed  a  presumption, 
Remained  all  their  honours'  most  humble  conjunction. 

The  "  humble  conjunction"  seems  to  have  fared  yet 
worse  than  Lord  Macaulay's  chaplain,  and  to  have 
£rot  no  apple-pie  at  all. 

Quite  distinct  from  the  pronunciation  of  particu 
lar  words  are  any  general  characteristics  in  the  way 
of  utterance  which  speakers  of  English  on  either 
side  may  notice  in  speakers  of  English  on  the  other 
side.  Americans  constantly  notice  what  they  call 
the  "English  intonation,"  the  "English  accent," 
nay,  as  I  have  already  said,  the  «  horrible  English 


86      IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

intonation."     Kow  I  am  not  very  clear  what  this 
accent  or  intonation  is,  and  the  less  so  as  I  have 
sometimes  been  told  that  I  myself  have  it,  some 
times  that  I  have  it   not,  but  that  I  speak  like  an 
American.     As  no  man  knows  exactly  how  he  him 
self  speaks,  I  cannot  judge  which  description  is  the 
truer.     On  the  other  hand  we  Britishers  are  apt  to 
remark    in   Americans    something   which   we   are 
tempted  to  call  by    the  shorter  word  "twang,"  a 
description    less   civil   perhaps   than    "intonation" 
without  an  adjective,  but  less  uncivil  surely   than 
"horrible    intonation."     As   to  the    origin    of  this 
"twang"    I   have   heard   various   opinions.     Some 
trace  it  to  a  theological,  some  to  a  merely  geogra 
phical,  cause.     It  lias  been  said  to  be  an  inheritance 
from  the  Puritans  as  Puritans  ;  others  say  that  it  is 
simply  the  natural  utterance  of  East-Anglia,  without 
reference  to  sect  or  party.     As  an  American  mark, 
the  thing  to  be  most  noticed  about  it  is,  that,  though 
very  common,  it  is  far  from  universal.     It  would 
be  in  no  way  wonderful  either  if  everybody  spoke 
with  a  'twang  or  if  nobody  spoke  with  a  twang. 
But  the  facts,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  are  these.     Some 
people  have  the  twang  very  strongly  ;  some  have  it 
not  at  all.    Some,  after  speaking  for  a  long  time  with 
out  it,  will  bring  it  in  in  a  particular  word  or  sen 
tence  ;  in  others  it  is  strongly  marked  when  a  few 


HALF-LEAENED  rRINTERS.  87 

words  are  uttered  suddenly,  but  dies  off  in  the  course 
of  a  longer  conversation.  And  I  distinctly  marked 
that  it  was  far  more  universal  among  women  than 
among  men.  I  could  mention  several  American 
friends  from  whose  speech — unless  possibly  in  par 
ticular  technical  words — no  one  could  tell  to  which 
side  of  the  Ocean  they  belonged,  while  the  utter 
ance  of  their  wives  was  distinctively  American.  To 
us  the  kind  of  utterance  of  which  I  speak  seems 
specially  out  of  place  in  the  mouth  of  a  graceful  and 
cultivated  woman  ;  but  I  have  heard  hints  back 
again  that  the  speech  of  graceful  and  cultivated 
Englishwomen  has  sometimes  had  just  the  same  ef 
fect  on  American  hearers.  But,  on  whichever  side 
our  taste  lies,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the 
American  utterance,  be  it  Puritan,  East- Anglian,  or 
anything  else,  is  no  modern  innovation,  but  has 
come  by  genuine  tradition  from  the  seventeenth 
century. 

It  is  otherwise  with  some  peculiarities  which  con 
cern,  not  the  natural  utterance  of  words  to  the  ear, 
but  their  artificial  representation  to  the  eye.  If  the 
schoolmaster  is  a  deadly  foe  to  language,  English  or 
any  other,  the  printer  is  a  foe  no  less  deadly.  Half 
the  unhistorical  spellings  which  disfigure  our  printed 
language  come  from  the  vagaries  of  half-learned 
printers,  on  which  side  of  the  Ocean  matters  very 


88     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

little.     As  for  Latin  words,  one  is  sometimes  tempted 
to  say,  let  them  spell  them  as  they  please ;  but  it  is 
hard  when  Teutonic  "  rime,"  a  word  which  so  many 
Romance  languages  have  borrowed,  is  turned  into 
"  rhyme,"  merely  because  some  printer's  mind  was 
confused     between    English    "rime"    and    Greek 
"rhythm."     So  it  is  with  specially  American  spell 
ing-fancies.     If  any  one  chooses  to  spell  words  like 
"traveller"  with  one  £,  it  looks  odd,  but  it  is  rea]ly 
not  worth   disputing  about.     Nor  is  it  worth  dis 
puting  about  "color"  or  "  colour,"  "honor"  or  "ho 
nour,"  and  the  like.     But  when  it  comes  to  u  armor," 
still  more  when  it  comes  to  "  neighbor,"  one's  Latin 
back  in  the  former  case,  one's  Teutonic  back  in  the 
other,  is  put  up.     Did  he  who  first  wrote  "  armor" 
fancy  that  "  armor"  was  a  Latin  word  like  "honor" 
or  "color"  ?     Let  armatura,  if  any  one  wishes  it,  be 
cut  short  into  armure ;  but  let  us  be  spared  such  a 
false   analogy  as   armor.      "  Arbor"  for  "  arbour" 
brings  out  more  strongly  the  delusion  of  those  who, 
having  a  Latin  tree  on  the  brain,  doffed  Teutonic 
"  harbour"  of  its  aspirate.     But  the  most  unkindest 
cut  of  all  is  when  Old-English  "  neahgefo^,"  which, 
according  to  the  universal  rule  of  the  language,  be 
comes  in  modern  English  "  neighbour,"    is  turned 
into  "  neighbor."     Did  anybody,  even  a  printer  or  a 
dictionary-maker,  really   fancy  that  the  last   three 


SPELLING.  89 

letters  of  "  neighbour"  had  anything  in  common 
with  the  last  three  letters  of  "  honour"?  It  is  surely 
hardly  needful  to  say  that  Old-English  u  is  in  mo 
dern  English  consistently  represented  by  ou ;  "  lids" 
becomes  "  house ;"  "su6"  becomes  "south;"  "ut" 
becomes  "  out" — and  "  neahgebur"  becomes  "  neigh- 
bour"  American  printers  too  have  some  odd  ways 
in  other  matters,  specially  as  to  their  way  of  dividing 
words  when  part  of  a  word  has  to  be  in  one  line  and 
part  in  another.  Thus  "  nothing"  will  be  divided, 
not  as  "  no-thing,"  but  as  "  noth-ing,"  as  if  it  were 
the  patronymic  of  a  name  "  Xoth."  Yet  surely 
even  a  printer  must  have  known  that  "  nothing"  is 
"  no-thing"  and  nothing  else.  So  again  "  knowledge" 
is  divided  as  "knowl-edge,"  suggesting  rather  the 
side  of  a  hill  than  the  occupation  or  condition  of  one 
who  knows.  It  is  really  quite  possible  that  the  d  may 
have  been  thrust  into  "  knowledge" — better  written 
"  knowlege" — from  some  thought  of  a  ledge.  Any 
how  one  suspects  that  very  few  people  know  that 
ledge  in  "  knowledge"  and  lock  in  "  wedlock"  are  one 
and  the  same  ending.  "  Wedlock"  at  least  is  safe 
from  being  divided  as  "wedl-ock"  because  every 
body  thinks  that  it  has  something  to  do  with  a  lock 
and  key. 

It  would  be  easy   to  pile  together  a  far  longer 


90     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

list  of  differences  of  usage  in  matter  of  speech 
between  England  and  America.  But  I  have  per 
haps  brought  together  enough  to  illustrate  my 
main  general  positions.  I  have  tried  to  show  that 
so-called  "Americanisms"  are  not  to  be  at  once 
cast  aside,  as  many  people  in  England  are  inclined 
to  cast  them  aside,  as  if  they  were  necessarily 
corruptions  of  the  common  speech,  as  if  it  proved 
something  against  a  form  of  words  to  show  that  it 
is  usual  in  America,  but  that  it  is  not  usual  in 
England.  Abuses  of  language  abound  in  both 
lands,  but  the  conservative  side  of  the  American 
character  has  led  to  the  survival  in  America  of 
many  good  English  words  and  phrases  which  have 
gone  out  of  use  in  England,  and  which  ignorant 
people  therefore  mistake  for  American  inventions. 
In  other  cases  again,  differences  of  usage  between 
the  two  countries  are  fully  explained  by  differences 
of  circumstances  between  the  two  countries.  In 
some  cases  again,  usages  which  cannot  be  called 
correct,  but  which  differ  from  mere  abuses  of 
language,  have  been  brought  in — in  either  country 
— through  mistaken  analogies  or  other  processes 
of  that  kind.  In  these  different  ways  there  has 
come  to  be  a  certain  distinction  between  the  re 
ceived  British  and  the  received  American  use  of 
the  common  English  tongue,  a  distinction  which 


AMERICAN  LA  WYERS.  91 

commonly  makes  it  easy  to  see  from  which  side  of 
Ocean  a  man  comes.  But  there  is  no  real  differ 
ence  of  language,  not  even  any  real  difference  of 
dialect;  the  speech  of  either  side  is  understood 
without  an  effort  by  the  men  of  the  other  side,  and 
the  differences  are  largely  of  a  kind  in  which 
neither  usage  can  be  said  to  be  in  itself  better  or 
worse  than  the  other. 

VIII. 

From  language  I  turn,  with  all  the  diffidence  of 
one  who  is  not  a  lawyer,  to  say  a  word  about  law, 
and,  with   greater  diffidence   still,   about   lawyers. 
The  lawyers  in  America  are  an  even  more  impor 
tant  class  than  they  are  in  England;  the  proportion 
of  them  in  the  legislative  bodies  both  of  the  States 
and  of  the  Union  is  something  amazing.     And  the 
main  point  in  which  the  position  of  the  legal  pro 
fession  in   America    differs    from   its  position  in 
England,  namely,  the  union  of  the  two  characters 
of  barrister  and  solicitor  in  the  same  person,  seems 
to  cot  two  ways.     On  the  one  hand,  I  am  told  that 
it   leads   to   the    admission    of  many  inferior   and 
incompetent  members  of  the  profession,  of  many 
even  who  do  not  understand  Latin.     But,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  helps,  together  with  that  localization 
of  justice  which  is   natural   under   the   American 


92     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE    UNITED  STATES. 

system,  to  secure  the  presence  of  some  lawyers  of 
the  higher  class  in  every  town  that  we  come  to.  In 
England  our  barristers  are  mostly  gathered  together 
in  London ;  in  a  few  of  the  greatest  towns  there  is 
a  local  bar  ;  but  the  ordinary  English  town  knows 
no  resident  form  of  lawyer  higher  than  the  local 
solicitor.  But  in  America  the  size  of  the  country 
and  its  Federal  constitution  join  to  hinder  that 
centralization  of  the  higher  justice  to  which1  we 
are  used.  In  all  the  large  towns  there  are  State 
courts,  and  often  Federal  courts  also.  And  these 
imply  the  constant  presence  of  men  who  answer, 
not  to  the  solicitor  who  appears  at  petty  sessions  or 
in  the  county  court,  but  to  the  barrister  practising 
before — a  layman  may  be  forgiven  for  not  ven 
turing  to  meddle  with  the  tribunals  bearing  new  and 
longer  names  which  have  supplanted  the  venerable 
and  historic  courts  of  a  few  years  back.  Thus 
there  is  in  every  town  a  kernel  of  society  of  a 
higher  kind  than  the  English  country-town  supplies. 
Now  in  the  higher  class  of  American  lawyers  there 
is  a  very  close  tie  between  America  and  England. 
Where  the  law  is  simply  the  law  of  England  with 
a  difference,  the  old  common  law  with  such  changes 
as  later  legislation  may  have  wrought,  there  must 
be  in  the  legal  profession  a  good  deal  of  knowledge 
of  English  matters.  However  it  may  be  with  any 


AMERICAN  COURTS.  93 

other  class,  to  an  educated  American  lawyer  at  least 
there  is  no  need  to  go  about  to  prove  that  America 
keeps  the  tongue  and  the  institutions  of  England, 
not  as  something  derived  or  borrowed  from  another 
people,  but  as  the  common  heritage  of  two  divided 
branches  of  the  same  people.     To  him  there  is  no 
need  to  prove  that  the  Englishman  of  America  has 
exactly  the   same   right  in   all   the  memories  and 
traditions   and   institutions   of   the    elder    days   of 
England  that  the  Englishman  of  Britain  has.     For 
he  has   the   surest  witness   of  the   fact  constantly 
before  his  eyes.     It  is  pleasant  to  see  an  American 
law  library,  with  English  and  American  books  side 
by  side.     It  is  pleasant  to  hear  an  American  legal 
pleading,  in  which  the  older  English  legislation,  the 
older  English   decisions,  are  dealt  with  as   no  less 
binding  than  the  legislation  and  decisions  of  the 
local  courts  and  assemblies,  and  where  the  English 
legislation  and  decisions  of  later  times  are  held  to 
be,  though  not  formally  binding,  yet  entitled  to  no 
small  respect.     As  to  outward  appearances  indeed, 
most  of  the  American  courts  have  lost  the  pomp 
and  circumstance  with  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
clothe  the  administration  of  the  higher  justice  at 
home.     It  is  only  in  that  great  tribunal  which  can 
sit  in  judgement  on  the  legislation  of  a  nation,  in 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  that  any 


94      IMPRE8&IOKS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

trace  is  left  of  the  outward  majesty  of  the  law  as  it 
is  understood  in  England.     But  look  at  any  Ameri 
can  court,  in  such  States  at  least  as  I  have  visited, 
and  we  see  that  the  real  life  of  English  law  and 
English  justice  is  there.     All  the  essential  princi 
ples,  all  the  essential  forms,  are  there.     The  very 
cry  of  oyez,  meaningless  most  likely  in  the  mouth 
of  the  crier  who  utters  it,  not  only  tells  us  that  it  is 
the   law  of   England  which   is   administering,  but 
reminds   us  how  largely  the  older  law  of  England 
was  recast— not  more  than  recast— at  the  hands  of 
the  Norman  and  the  Angevin.     We  feel  that  the 
law  which  is  laid  down  by  the  banks  of  the  Hudson 
or  the  Potomac  is  still  the  law  of  King  Edward 
with   the  amendments   of  King  William.      Some 
times   indeed,  when  we   find    the   newer   England 
cleaving  to   cumbrous   traditions  which   the   elder 
England  has  cast  away,  we  feel  that  a  few  further 
amendments   of   later   days  would   not  be  out  of 
place.      The  wonderful   repetitions  and  contradic 
tions  in  the  indictment  against  Guiteau  belong  to  a 
past  stage  of  our  own  jurisprudence ;  yet  there  is  a 
certain,  perhaps  unreasonable,  satisfaction  in  finding 
that  the  newer  home  of  our  people  is  conservative 
enough  to  cleave  to  some  things  which  the  elder 
home  has   exchanged   for   newer    devices.      New 
devices   indeed  we   sometimes  light   upon   in   the 


AMERICAN  LAW.  95 

new  world.  When  we  look  at  a  Maryland  judge 
who  is  authorized — with  the  consent  to  be  sure  of 
those  chiefly  concerned — to  send  men  to  the  gallows 
without  a  jury,  we  are  divided  between  wonder  at 
the  innovation  and  awe  towards  a  being  who  can  do 
what  no  other  being  that  we  ever  saw  before  can 
do.  We  are  struck  with  a  different  feeling  when 
we  see  the  mutual  reverence  which  judge  and  jury 
show  to  one  another  in  Massachusetts,  where  the 
judge  stands  up  to  give  his  charge  to  the  jury  and 
the  jury  stand  up  to  listen  to  his  charge.  Even 
varieties  of  this  kind,  even  what  we  are  inclined  to 
look  on  as  the  lack  of  some  useful  solemnities,  bring 
more  forcibly  home  to  us  that  the  law  which  is 
dealt  out  is,  after  all,  our  own  law.  In  this,  as  in 
most  other  American  matters,  we  notice  the  slight 
est  diversity  all  the  more  because  the  two  things 
are  in  their  main  essence  so  thoroughly  the  same. 

I  am  not  forgetful  that  the  laws  of  different 
States  are  very  far  from  being  everywhere  the 
same,  and  that  the  legislation  of  some  States  has 
brought  in  some  startling  differences  from  the  le 
gislation  both  of  England  and  of  other  States.  But 
we  may  still  carry  on  our  eleventh-century  formula. 
The  law  is  not  a  new  law ;  it  is  the  old  law,  with 
certain — perhaps  very  considerable— amendments. 
Even  if  it  be  held  that  a  new  superstructure  has 


96     IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

been  built  up,  it  lias  been  built  up  upon  an  old 
groundwork.  Here  there  is  a  tie,  not  only  to  the 
mother-country,  but  to  an  old  side  of  the  mother- 
country.  A  real  American  lawyer-  must  be  an 
English  lawyer  too.  He  cannot  fail  to  know  some 
thing  of  the  history  of  the  land  whose  laws  it 
becomes  his  duty  to  master ;  he  may  know  at  least 
as  much  as  the  English  lawyer  himself  thinks  it  his 
business  to  know.  If  a  good  many  on  both  sides 
are  still  floundering  in  the  quagmire  of  Blackstone, 
there  are  some  on  both  sides  who  have  made  their 
way  to  the  firm  ground  of  Stubbs  and  Maine. 

I  spoke  of  the  indictment  against  Guiteau.  I 
heard  part  of  his  trial,  and  a  strange  scene  it  was. 
From  all  that  I  saw  and  heard  and  read  on  the 
matter,  I  was  led  to  the  conclusion  that,  though 
some  other  judges  on  both  sides  of  the  Ocean 
might,  simply  as  being  stronger  men,  have  managed 
the  trial  better,  yet  that  the  judge  who  tried  it  was 
not  technically  to  blame.  I  gathered  that  he  really 
had  no  power  to  stop  Guiteau's  interruptions.  The 
constitution  provides  only  that  the  prisoner  shall 
have  the  "  assistance  of  counsel."  Now  English 
counsel,  and  American  counsel  too  of  the  higher 
class,  would  have  thrown  up  their  briefs  when  the 
prisoner  insisted  on  talking  for  himself.  But  Gui 
teau's  counsel  were  not  of  the  higher  class ;  and — I 


TltlAL  OF  QUITS AU.  97 

speak,  as  a  layman,  with  trembling — it  may  be 
doubted  whether  the  English  usage  depends  on 
anything  more  than  an  honourable  understanding. 
The  truth  seems  to  be  that  no  lawgiver  in  any  time 
or  place  ever  foresaw  the  possibility  of  such  a  pri 
soner  as  Guiteau,  and  that  therefore  there  was  no 
law  ready  made  which  exactly  suited  his  case. 
Again,  though  the  proceedings  in  the  American 
courts  are,  in  all  essential  points — for  wigs  and 
gowns  are  not  essential  points — so  like  our  own, 
yet  the  arrangements  for  the  distribution  of  judicial 
action  are  very  different.  In  England  such  a  case 
would  have  been  tried  before  a  judge — perhaps 
more  than  one  judge — of  the  highest  class.  And 
till  I  reached  Washington,  I  took  for  granted  that 
the  judge  to  whom  so  important  a  duty  was  in- 
trusted  was  one  of  the  sages  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
I  soon  found  however  that  Guiteau  was  being  tried 
before  a  magistrate  of  greatly  inferior  rank,  an 
swering  rather  to  a  recorder  or  a  county  court 
judge  among  ourselves.  The  indictment,  it  may 
be  remarked,  did  not  specify  the  murder  of  a 
President  as  differing  at  all  from  the  murder  of 
another  man.  The  slain  man  was  simply  "one 
James  Abram  Garfield,  being  in  the  peace  of  God 
and  of  the  United  States."  From  the  pleadings 
of  Guiteau's  counsel  I  carried  away  one  of  the 


98      IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

choicest  fallacies  tliat  1  ever  heard.  The  prisoner 
must  be  mad,  because  he  had  shot  a  President 
of  the  United  States.  Sane  people  might  kill  an 
European  king,  for  European  kings  were  not  the 
choice  of  their  people,  and  were 'of  ten  their  oppres 
sors.  But  no  sane  man  could  wish  to  harm  a  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States,  the  choice  of  the  people. 
The  advocate  must  have  underrated  the  intelligence 
even  of  the  black  member  of  the  jury,  who  must 
surely  have  remembered  that  the  liberator  of  his 
race  died  by  the  hands  of  a  murderer  whom  no  one 
looked  on  as  mad.  And  it  would  be  strange  if  no 
one  of  the  twelve  could  go  on  to  argue  that  a 
hereditary  king,  who  comes  to  his  crown  by  no 
fault,  indeed  by  no  act,  of  his  own,  need  not  offend 
any  one  by  the  mere  fact  of  his  accession,  while  the 
accession  of  an  elective  magistrate  must  disappoint 
somebody  and  commonly  offends  a  powerful  party. 

I  was  unluckily  able  to  learn  next  to  nothing  on 
one  of  the  points  on  which  I  was  most  anxious  to 
learn  something.  This  was  the  administration  of 
justice  and  the  general  management  of  public  busi 
ness  in  the  rural  districts.  My  only  chance  was 
during  a  sojourn  in  a  rural  part  of  Virginia,  where, 
as  far  as  I  could  see,  nothing  of  any  public  interest 
went  on  at  all.  I  did  indeed  see  in  the  papers  that 
a  judge  showed  himself  at  certain  intervals  in  the 


JUSTICES  OF  THE  PEACE.  99 

court-house  of  the  county ;  but  I  had  no  chance  of 
getting  there.  I  learned  indeed  one  thing,  that  the 
word  "  county"  is  heard  at  least  a  hundred  times  in 
Virginia,  for  once  that  it  is  heard  in  New  England. 
This  comes  of  the  higher  local  organization  of  New 
England.  There  the  township  rules  everything; 
the  county  is  at  most  an  aggregate  of  townships 
which  has  no  great  practical  importance.  In  Vir 
ginia  the  -township  hardly  exists  ;  the  county  is  the 
division  which  comes  home  to  men  in  every  relation 
of  life,  even  more,  I  should  say,  than  it  does  in 
England.  On  the  whole,  the  part  of  Virginia  that 
I  saw  rather  reminded  me  of  those  ancient  inhabi 
tants  of  Laish  who  dwelled  careless,  quiet,  and  se 
cure,  who  had  no  business  with  any  man,  and  who 
had  no  magistrate  to  put  them  to  shame  in  anything. 
I  did  not  see  that  they  wanted  much  putting  to 
shame ;  but  there  seemed  nobody  to  do  if  if  by  any 
chance  such  a  course  had  been  needed.  In  the 
towns,  on  the  other  hand,  the  administrators  of  the 
smaller  justice  are  far  from  keeping  themselves  out 
of  sight.  One  who  has  the  good  or  bad  luck  to  be 
one  of  the  Great  Unpaid  in  his  own  land  is  a  little 
shocked  at  seeing  the  words  "  Justice  of  the  Peace" 
written  up  over  a  small  office.  And  not  only  are 
those  words  to  be  seen  over  a  small  office,  they  may 
be  seen  over  two  small  offices  on  opposite  sides  of 


100  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

the  street,  as  if  His  Worship  on  either  side  wished 
to  hinder  any  business  from  going  to  the  shop  over 
the  way.  We  must  allow  something  for  the  Ameri 
can  developement  of  advertising ;  those  who  adver 
tise  on  rocks  and  rails  will  certainly  not  shrink  from 
advertising  on  sign-boards.  Some  American  law 
yers  announce  their  name  and  calling  over  their 
offices  in  a  style  which  I  fancy  that  no  English  solici 
tor  would  follow.  But  to  the  British  mind  there  is 
something  strange  in  the  notion  of  a  Justice  of  the 
Peace  advertising  his  functions  in  the  most  modest 
shape.  Here  comes  in  the  difference  between  paid 
and  unpaid  ;  also,  I  suspect,  the  difference  between 
payment  by  salary  and  payment  by  fees.  It  is  di 
rectly  to  the  advantage  of  the  American  Justice 
that  business  should  come  to  his  office  and  not  to 
the  office  of  the  other  Justice  over  the  way. 

In  short,  the  American  Justice  of  the  Peace 
holds  a  position  quite  different  from,  and  very  infe 
rior  to,  the  position  of  his  English  brother.  So 
does  the  American  Sheriff.  But  I  suspect  that  the 
offices  themselves  in  the  two  countries  do  not  differ 
nearly  so  much  as  the  men  who  hold  them.  I  mean 
when  the  English  Justice  acts  strictly  as  a  Justice. 
The  difference  shows  itself  in  this  way.  The  di 
rect  judicial  functions  of  an  English  magistrate  sit 
ting  in  petty  sessions  are  not  very  exalted  or  very 


A  LAW-ABIDING' 

inviting.     The  office  keeps  up  its  position  because 
it  is  unpaid,  and  because  it  carries  with  it  a  good 
deal  of  authority  and  local  dignity  in   other  ways. 
Pay  the  magistrate,  take  away  his  position  as  one  of 
the  ruling  assembly  of  the  county,  leave  him  simply 
a  local  judge  in  the  smallest  matters,  and  he  would 
most   likely  sink  to   the    level    of    his  American 
brother.      The  same  kind  of  union   of  petty  and 
sometimes  disagreeable  duties  with  power  and  dig 
nity  in  other  ways  comes  out  still  more  conspicu 
ously  in  the  office  of  proctor  in  the  English  Universi 
ties.     In  both  cases  the  argument  is  that  it  is  well 
to  have  the  inferior  class  of  duties  done  by  men  of 
a  higher  stamp  than  those  to  whom  they  would  be 
likely  to  fall  if  they  stood  alone.     The  petty  police 
of  the  University  can  hardly  be  in  itself  attractive 
to  a  man  of  high  scholarship  and  refinement.     But 
when  it  is  joined  to  a  commanding  position  in  other 
ways,  to  a  kind  of  tribunicia  potestas,  the  best  men 
in  the  Universities  are  ready  to  undertake  it. 

The  Americans  are  surely,  on  the  whole,  a  law- 
abiding  people.  Some  of  them  profess,  and  I  am 
inclined  to  believe  that  the  profession  is  to  some 
extent  true,  that  they  are  more  than  a  law-abiding 
people,  that  they  are  a  patient  people.  They  tell 
us  that  they  put  up  with  grievances,  sometimes 


$  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

from  the  law,  sometimes  from  breakers  of  the  law, 
with  more  of  endurance  than  we  who  have  stayed 
on  this  side  of  Ocean.  On  the  other  hand,  one 
sometimes  hears  in  America  of  breaches  of  the  law 
of  a  peculiar  kind  which  certainly  have  nothing 
like  them  in  this  country.  I  do  not  mean  ordinary 
crimes,  however  great.  I  do  not  mean  mere  out 
breaks  of  popular  indignation  against  particular 
persons.  The  American  papers,  while  I  was  in  the 
country,  contained  a  good  many  ugly  stories  in 
these  ways ;  but  I  dare  say  it  would  have  been  easy 
to  cap  each  of  them  by  stories  of  the  same  kind  in 
England,  or  at  any  rate  elsewhere  in  Europe.  I 
mean  outrages  directly  committed  against  the  law 
itself.  I  read  an  account  how,  not  in  any  wild 
place  in  the  far  West,  but  in  so  respectable  a  State 
as  Ohio,  a  man  committed  for  trial,  on  a  charge  of 
murder,  but  not  yet  tried,  was  taken  out  of  prison 
by  a  mob  and  hanged.  And  this  case  did  not 
stand  alone.  I  heard  of  other  cases  of  prisons  be 
ing  in  this  way  forced,  and  even  of  officers  of  jus 
tice  being  killed  in  resisting  this  specially  lawless 
form  of  violence.  I  heard  also  of  "  Garfield  aveng 
ers,"  people  who  were  seeking  to  kill  Guiteau,  in 
stead  of  leaving  him  to  the  slower  action  of  the 
law.  One  such  attempt  was  actually  made,  and 
that  by  one  of  the  soldiers  who  were  keeping  guard 


OUTRAGES  AGAINST  LAW.  103 

over  him.     The  culprit  was  tried  by  a  court-mar- 
tial,  and,  naturally  and  righteously,  he  received  a 
heavy  sentence,   a    long    term    of   imprisonment. 
Strange  to  say,  the  man  who  had  so  directly  flown 
in  the  face  of  the  law,  who  had  so  foully  betrayed 
his  own  personal  trust,  became  an  object  of  sympa 
thy.     He  was  a  patriot ;  his   patriotism  took  per 
haps  a  somewhat  irregular  shape,  but  he  was  on  the 
whole  more  to  be  praised  than  blamed.     He  was 
likened  to  the  man  who  had  killed  the  murderer  of 
Lincoln.     No  analogy  could  be  more  wide  of  the 
mark.     Perhaps  even  the  killing  of  Booth  was  a 
little  hasty ;  still  it  was  done   under   circumstances 
which  on  the  whole  justified  it.     Booth  was  escap 
ing  from  justice  ;.  Gniteau  was  safe  in  the  hands  of 
justice,  and  it  was  one  of  the  officers  of  justice  who 
trampled   justice  under  foot.     Yet   the   President 
was  besieged  by  petitions  for  the  pardon   of  Ser 
geant  Mason.     The  feeling  was  not  universal ;  wise 
men  protested;  but  it  was  very  general.     I  should 
fancy  that  in   England   any  feeling   of   the   kind 
would  not  have  gone  beyond  that  silly  and,  we  may 
trust,  small  class  which  finds  an  object  of  sympathy 
in  every  criminal. 

Now  what  is  the  cause  of  this  particular  form  of 
lawlessness?  I  should  be  loath  to  believe  that  law 
and  government  which  spring  direct  from  the  peo- 


104  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

pie  are  in  themselves  necessarily  weaker  than  law 
and  government  which  in  some  sort  spring  from  a 
source  beyond  the  people.     I  should  be  loath  to  be 
lieve  that  justice  exercised  in  the  name  of  a  com 
monwealth  has  of  itself  less  strength  than  justice 
exercised  in  the  name  of  a  king.     It  is  possible  that 
men  may  fancy  that,  by  taking  the   law  into  their 
own   hands,  they  are  asserting  their  rights  as  the 
original  source  of  the  law.     No  notion  can  be  more 
foreign   to   the    true    spirit    of    democracy.     The 
source  of  law,  the  source  of  all  authority,  is  the  peo 
ple  ;    but  the  people  does  not   mean  A,  B,  and  C, 
acting    according    to    their    personal    pleasure;  it 
means    the  whole  body  acting   constitutionally  in 
their  assembly,  primary  or  representative.     I  have 
always  admired  the  usual  form  for  the  acto  of  a 
State  Legislature ;  «  The  people  of  State  A,  repre 
sented  by  their  Senate  and  House  of  Assembly,  or 
dain  as  follows."     But  when  the  people  have  or 
dained,  surely  each  one  among  the  people  has  only 
to  obey.     The  true  democratic  feeling  surely  is  that 
each  man   in  obeying  the  law  which  he  has  helped 
to  make,  in  honouring  the  magistrate  whom  he  has 
helped  to  choose,  is  really  honouring  himself  and 
the  community  of  which  he  is  a  part.     But  it  is 
possible  that  there  may  be  some  minds  in  republican 
countries  which  cannot  rise  to  this  standard,  just  as 


THE  TRUE  DEMOCRATIC  SPIRIT.          105 

there  are  minds  in  monarchic  countries  which  can 
not  understand  the  existence  of  such  a  standard.  It 
is  a  fact  that,  at  the  time  of  the  American  civil 
war,  there  were  people  in  England  who  could  not 
understand  that  there  could  be  treason  or  rebellion 
in  a  republic.  I  do  not  mean  people  who  took  up 
any  intelligible  ground  to  prove  that  secession  was 
not  treason  or  rebellion  ;  I  mean  people  who  serious 
ly  held  that,  because  the  United  States  had  no  king, 
there  could  not  in  any  case  be  such  a  thing  as  trea 
son  or  rebellion  in  the  United  States.  Still  less 
could  the  same  class  of  people  be  made  to  under 
stand,  ten  years  earlier,  that  there  could  be  treason 
or  rebellion  on  the  part  of  the  chosen  magistrate  of 
a  commonwealth  who  used  the  powers  of  his  office 
to  overthrow  that  commonwealth.  Yet  the  mob 
that  breaks  into  a  prison,  that  kills  the  gaoler  or  the 
sheriff,  and  hangs  the  yet  uncondemned  prisoner, 
foul  as  is  the  breach  of  justice  and  the  insult  to  law, 
does  in  a  wild  way  carry  out  some  of  the  objects  of 
law.  Those  who  so  act  are  after  all  less  guilty  than 
the  man  who  upsets  all  law  purely  for  own  personal 
ends. 

It  is  hardly  needful  to  attribute  this  kind  of  out 
rage  to  any  necessary  weakness  of  the  law  in  a 
democratic  state.  Still  it  is  not  unlikely  to  be 
connected  with  a  certain  weakness  in  the  adminis- 


106  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

tration   of  the  law.     If  many  European  countries 
are   over-governed,  one   may  say  that  the  United 
States   are  under-governed.     It  is  the  better  fault 
of  the  two ;  but  it  surely  is  a  fault.     In  the  newly 
settled  States  and  Territories  it  often  happens  that 
irregularities  cannot  be  avoided  ;  the  law  very  often 
can  be  enforced  only  by  agencies  unknown  to  the 
law.     There  are  times  and   places   in   young   and 
rude  societies  where  it  is  impossible  sometimes  to 
avoid  the  appeal  to  Mr.  Justice  Lynch.     And  even 
in    thoroughly   settled    and     civilized    States    the 
machinery  for  executing    the    law  is  often  weak. 
The  police  is  often  insufficient ;  it  is  less  uncom 
mon  than  it  is  here  for  a  man  to  find  himself  in 
that  kind  of  case  where  a  man  must  help  himself 
or  his  neighbours  without  the  countenance  of  any 
officer  of  the  law.      There  is  indeed  a  wide  gap 
between  taking  the  law  into  one's  own  hands  when 
the  law  fails  to  give  help,  and  deliberately  flying  in 
the  face  of  the  law  when  the  law  is  strong  enough 
to  do  its  own  work.     Yet  this  last  crime  is  more 
likely  to    come    into   men's    heads  where   action, 
which,  even  if  justifiable,  is  formally  irregular,  is 
familiar  to  men's  minds.     I  thought  I  saw  that,  on 
the  whole,  human  life  is  less  thought  of  in  America 
than  it  is  in  England.     The  fact  that  duels  still  go 
on  is  one  instance  out  of  several.     The  general  con- 


"INSURRECTION."  107 

dition  of  the  country  has  a  good  deal  to  do  with 
this  state  of  things.  Even  in  the  old  States  there 
are  large  tracts  which  are  very  thinly  inhabited  and 
which  cannot  he  called  fully  settled.  In  American 
travelling  one  is  sometimes  tempted  to  think  that 
the  only  choice  lies  between  the  city  and  the  wil 
derness.  As  we  go  out  of  New  York,  we  soon  find 
ourselves  in  a  state  of  things  far  more  primitive 
than  we  find  at  the  same  distance  from  a  great 
English  city.  Wherever  there  is  any  failure  in  the 
police  of  the  city,  for  that  there  can  be  no  excuse ; 
but  the  police  of  the  wilderness  is  a  thing  hard  to 
carry  out  under  any  form  of  government. 

The  action  of  the  government  again,  when  it 
does  act,  sometimes  takes  forms  which  are  a  little 
startling,  whether  in  fact  or  in  name.  I  came  to 
America  almost  directly  from  lands  where  insurrec 
tions  and  civil  wars  are  not  unfrequent.  I  left  be 
hind  me  the  valiant  men  of  Crivoscia  gathering  on 
their  mountains  to  defend  the  chartered  rights  of 
their  fathers  against  the  base  faithlessness  of  their 
Austrian  oppressor.  But  I  did  not  expect  to  hear 
of  insurrections  and  civil  wars  within  the  great  re 
public  of  the  West.  Yet,  in  the  course  of  my 
American  sojourn,  the  Governor  of  New  York 
found  it  needful  to  proclaim  a  district  of  his  State 
as  beinnf  in  a  "  state  of  insurrection."  Its  inhabi- 


108  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

tants  had  refused  payment  of  a  tax  which,  as  far  as 
I  could  make  out,  had  been  quite  lawfully  voted, 
but  which  the  people  of  this  particular  place 
thought  to  press  unfairly  upon  them.  I  did  not 
hear  how  the  matter  ended ;  if  it  grew  very  serious, 
it  might  call  for  the  intervention  of  the  militia  of 
the  State,  or  even  of  the  United  States  army.  But 
the  "insurrection"  seemed  to  be  treated  in  the 
newspapers  as  more  of  a  joke  than  anything  else. 
So  was  another  incident  which  might  almost  pass 
for  a  civil  war.  Some  Maryland  fishermen  had 
been  seeking  their  prey — oysters,  I  think  it  was — 
in  an  irregular  manner  on  the  coast  of  Virginia. 
Some  said  that  a  constable  or  two  would  have  been 
quite  enough  to  assert  the  rights  of  the  State  and  its 
citizens.  The  Governor  of  Virginia,  however, 
thought  otherwise  ;  he  forthwith  gathered  a  fleet — 
not  quite,  I  fancy,  on  the  scale  of  King  Philip's  ar 
mada — and  went  forth  in  person  to  scatter  the  in 
truders.  Such  an  incident  as  this  was  not  without 
charms  for  a  special  student  of  federal  government. 

IX. 

I  often  asked  my  American  friends  of  both  po 
litical  parties  what  was  the  difference  between  them. 
I  told  them  that  I  could  see  none ;  both  sides 
seemed  to  me  to  say  exactly  the  same  things.  I 


REPUBLICANS  AND  DEMOCRATS.          109 

sometimes  got  the  convenient,  but  not  wholly  satis- 
isfactory,  answer  :  Yes;  but  then  we  mean  what  we 
say,  while  the  other  party  only  pretends.  Cer 
tainly,  when  I  was  there,  the  difference  between 
different  sections  of  the  Eepublican  party  was  much 
clearer  to  an  outsider  than  the  difference  between 
Eepublicans  and  Democrats.  I  found  it  easier  to 
grasp  the  difference  between  a  Stalwart  Eepublican 
and  a  Republican  who  was  not  Stalwart,  than  to 
grasp  the  immediate  difference  between  a  Eepubli 
can  and  a  Democrat.  On  intelligible  questions  like 
Free  Trade  and  Civil  Service  Reform,  or  again  the 
local  Virginian  question  of  paying  or  not  paying 
one's  lawful  debts,  the  division  did  not  follow  the 
regular  cleavage  of  parties.  Questions  of  this  kind 
are  plain  enough ;  the  distinction  between  the  two 
great  acknowledged  parties  is  just  now  much  less 
plain.  So  it  seemed  to  me  when  I  wrote  in  the 
summer  of  1882,  immediately  after  my  return  from 
America,  and  the  elections  which  took  place  in  the 
winter  of  the  same  year  seem  to  bear  out  my  con 
clusion.  The  late  Democratic  victories  are  hardly 
victories  over  the  Eepublican  party  as  a  party. 
They  are  more  truly  victories  over  a  section  of  the 
Eepublican  party  which  is  eschewed  by  a  large 
body  of  Eepublicans.  It  is  hardly  possible  that  the 
Democratic  success  can  have  been  gained  without 


HO  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

the  help  of  Republican  votes.  But  because  men  of 
the  two  parties  seem  to  say  much  the  same  things, 
because  they  can  sometimes  act  together  when 
questions  occur  in  which  principle  is  higher  than 
party,  it  does  not  at  all  follow  that  there  are  no  dif 
ferences  between  them.  There  are  abiding  differ 
ences  between  them,  differences  which  have  been 
important  in  the  past,  which  may  be  important  in 
the  future;  but  just  now  questions  which  would 
bring  out  those  differences  are  not  uppermost.  I 
am  not  sure  that  this  is  a  wholesome  state  of  things. 
If  there  must  be — and  there  doubtless  must  be— 
parties  in  a  state,  it  is  better  that  they  should  be 
divided  on  some  intelligible  difference  of  principle, 
than  that  political  warfare  should  sink  into  a  mere 
question  of  ins  and  outs,  of  Shanavests  and  Cara- 
vats.  But,  though  the  distinction  between  Repub 
licans  and  Democrats  as  such  does  look  from  out 
side  very  like  a  distinction  between  Shanavests  and 
Caravats,  it  is  only  accidentally  so.  Either  the 
questions  of  the  present  moment  may  establish 
fresh  lines  of  difference,  or  the  old  and  abiding  dis 
tinction  may  some  day  again  become  as  real  as  the 
distinction  between  Tory  and  Radical,  Legitimist 
and  Republican.  Should  any  question  ever  again 
arise  as  to  the  respective  powers  of  the  Union  and 
of  the  States,  it  is  easy  to  see  which  side  each  party 


STATE  RIGHTS.  HI 

would  take.  It  is  simply  because  there  is  no  such 
burning  question  at  present  stirring  that  the  two 
parties  seem  largely  to  say  the  same  things,  and  yet 
to  be  as  strongly  divided  as  ever. 

I  may  speak  on  this  matter  as  one  who  has  made 
the  nature  of  federal  government  an  object  of  spe 
cial  study.  It  strikes  me  that,  as  the  doctrine  of 
State  Rights  was  pushed  to  a  mischievous  extreme 
twenty  years  and  more  ago,  so  there  is  danger  now 
of  the  opposite  doctrine  being  pushed  to  a  mischiev 
ous  extreme.  The  more  I  look  at  the  American 
Union,  the  more  convinced  I  am  that  so  vast  a  re 
gion,  taking  in  lands  whose  condition  differs  so 
widely  in  everything,  can  be  kept  together  only  by 
a  federal  system,  leaving  large  independent  powers 
in  the  hands  of  the  several  States.  No  single  par 
liament  could  legislate,  no  single  government  could 
administer,  for  Maine,  Florida,  and  California. 
Let  those  States  be  left  to  a  great  extent  indepen 
dent,  and  they  may  remain  united  on  those  points 
on  which  it  is  well  that  they  should  remain  united. 
To  insist  on  too  close  an  union  is  the  very  way  to 
lead  to  separation.  I  know  of  no  immediate  reason 
to  fear  any  attempt  at  centralization  such  as  might 
thus  lead  to  separation.  But  it  does  seem  to  be  a 
possible  danger ;  it  seems  to  me  that  there  are  ten 
dencies  at  work  which  are  more  likely  to  lead  to 


112  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

that  form  of  error  than  to  its  opposite.  In  discuss 
ing  this  matter,  I  must  cleave  to  some  doctrines 
which  I  know  are  in  some  quarters  looked  on  as 
obsolete.  I  must  even  cleave  to  the  phrase  "  Sove 
reign  States,"  though  I  know  it  may  offend  many. 
For  a  State  is  sovereign  which  has  any  powers 
which  it  holds  by  inherent  right,  without  control 
on  the  part  of  any  other  power,  without  responsi 
bility  to  any  other  power.  Now  every  American 
State  has  powers  of  this  kind.  The  original  thir 
teen  States  did  not  receive  their  existing  powers 
from  the  Union ;  they  surrendered  to  the  Union 
certain  powers  which  were  naturally  their  own,  and 
kept  certain  others  to  themselves.  And  the  later 
States  were  admitted  on  the  same  terms  and  to  the 
same  rights  as  the  original  thirteen.  There  is 
therefore  a  range  within  which  the  State  is  sove 
reign  :  within  another  range,  within  the  range  of  the 
powers  which  have  been  surrendered  to  the  Union, 
the  Union  is  sovereign.  But  if  it  is  plain  matter 
of  history  that  whatever  powers  the  Union  holds, 
it  holds  by  the  grant  of  the  States,  it  is  equally 
plain  that  the  grant  was  irrevocable,  except  so  far 
as  its  terms  may  be  modified  by  a  constitutional 
amendment.  And  the  power  of  making  a  constitu 
tional  amendment  is  itself  part  of  the  grant  of  the 
States,  which  thus  agreed  that,  in  certain  cases,  a 


SECESSION.  113 

fixed  majority  of  the  States  should  bind  the  whole. 
The  error  of  the  Secessionists  lay  in  treating  an  ir 
revocable  grant  as  if  it  had  been  a  revocable  one. 
The  doctrine  of  the  right  of  Secession,  as  a  consti 
tutional  right,  was  absurd  on  the  face  of  it.  Seces 
sion  from  the  Union  was  as  much  rebellion,  as 
much  a  breach  of  the  law  in  force  at  the  time,  as 
was  the  original  revolt  of  the  colonies  against  the 
King.  The  only  question  in  either  case  was 
whether  those  special  circumstances  had  arisen 
which  alone  can  justify  breach  of  the  ordinary  law. 
But  it  is  a  pity,  in  avoiding  this  error,  to  run  into 
the  opposite  one,  and  to  hold,  not  only  that  the 
grant  made  by  the  States  to  the  Union  was  irre 
vocable,  but  that  the  grant  was  really  made  the 
other  way.  I  find  that  it  is  the  received  doctrine  in 
some  quarters  that  the  States  have  no  rights  but 
such  as  the  Union  allows  to  them.  One  of  the  Bos 
ton  newspapers  was  angry  because  I  put  forth  in 
one  of  my  lectures  the  plain  historical  fact  that  the 
States,  as,  in  theory  at  least,  independent  common 
wealths,  surrendered  certain  defined  powers  to  the 
Union,  and  kept  all  other  powers  in  their  own 
hands.  The  Boston  paper  was  yet  more  angry  be 
cause  a  large  part  of  a  Boston  audience  warmly 
cheered — warmly,  that  is,  for  Boston — such  dan 
gerous  doctrines.  I  was  simply  ignorant;  those 
who  cheered  me  were  something  worse. 


114  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Now  notions  of  this  kind  are  not  confined  to  a 
single  newspaper.  And  they  surely  may  lead  to 
results  as  dangerous  at  one  end  as  the  doctrine  of 
Secession  was  at  the  other.  Both  alike  cut  directly 
at  the  very  nature  of  a  federal  system.  Connected 
perhaps  with  this  tendency  is  one  of  those  changes 
in  ordinary  speech  which  come  in  imperceptibly, 
without  people  in  general  remarking  them,  but 
which  always  prove  a  great  deal.  In  England  we 
now  universally  use  the  word  "  Government"  where 
in  my  boyhood  everybody  said  "Ministry"  or 
"Ministers."  Then  it  was  "the  Duke  of  Welling 
ton's  Ministry "  or  Lord  Grey's;  now  it  is  "Lord 
Beaconsfield's  Government"  or  Mr.  Gladstone's. 
This  change,  if  one  comes  to  think  about  it,  cer 
tainly  means  a  great  deal.*  So  it  means  a  great 
deal  that,  where  the  word  "federal"  used  to  be 
used  up  to  the  time  of  the  civil  war  or  later,  the 
word  "national"  is  now  used  all  but  invariably. 
It  used  to  be  "federal  capital,"  "federal  army," 
"federal  revenue,"  and  so  forth.  ~No\v  the  word 
"  national "  is  almost  always  used  instead.  I  have 
now  and  then  seen  the  word  "  federal "  used  in  the 


*  I  find  that  I  made  this  remark  as  long  ago  as  1864.  See 
"Historical  Essays,"  First  Series,  p.  384  (Presidential  Govern 
ment). 


"FEDERAL"   OR   "NATIONAL."  H5 

old  way,  but  so  rarely  that  I  suspect  tliat  it  was 
used  of  set  purpose,  as  a  kind  of  protest,  as  I  might 
use  it  myself.  Now  there  is  not  the  slightest  objec 
tion,  to  the  word  "  national ;"  for  the  union  of  the 
States  undoubtedly  forms,  for  all  political  purposes, 
a  nation.  The  point  to  notice  is,  not  the  mere  use 
of  the  word  "  national,"  but  the  displacement  of  the 
word  "  federal "  in  its  favour.  This  surely  marks  a 
tendency  to  forget  the  federal  character  of  the 
national  government,  or  at  least  to  forget  that  its 
federal  character  is  its  very  essence.  The  difference 
between  a  federal  government  and  one  not  federal 
is  a  difference  of  original  structure  which  runs 
through  everything.  It  is  a  far  wTider  difference 
than  the  difference  between  a  kingdom  and  a  repulv 
lic,  which  may  differ  only  in  the  form  given  to  the 
executive.  It  is  perfectly  natural  that  the  word 
"federal"  should  be  in  constant  use  in  a  federal 
state,  in  far  more  common  use  than  any  word  im 
plying  kingship  need  be  in  a  kingdom.  There  is  a 
constant  need  to  distinguish  things  which  come 
within  the  range  of  the  federal  power  from  things 
which  come  within  the  range  of  the  State  or  canton. 
And  for  this  purpose  the  word  "  federal "  is  more 
natural  than  the  word  "  national."  The  proper 
range  of  the  latter  word  surely  lies  in  matters  which 
have  to  do  with  other  nations.  One  would  speak  of 


116  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

the  national  honour,  but  of  the  federal  revenue. 
That  "  national "  should  have  driven  out  "  federal " 
within  a  range  where  the  latter  word  seems  so  spe 
cially  at  home  does  really  look  as  if  the  federal  cha. 
racter  of  the  national  power  was,  to  say  the  least, 
less  strongly  present  to  men's  minds  than  it  was 
twenty  years  back. 

The  historical  connexion  between  the  written 
constitution  of  the  United  States  and  the  unwritten 
constitution  of  England  is  a  truth  on  which  I  have 
often  tried  to  insist,  and  not  least  when  I  was  lectur 
ing  on  such  matters  in  the  United  States  themselves. 
I  will  not  here  go  into  the  subject  at  length ;  it  may 
be  enough  to  speak  of  the  most  remarkable  case  of 
the  closeness  with  which  the  daughter  has,  wherever 

CD  * 

it  has  been  possible,  reproduced  the  parent.  This 
is  the  prevalence  of  legislative  bodies  composed 
of  two  houses,  a  system  which  may  be  studied  alike 
in  the  Union,  in  the  States,  and  in  many  at  least 
of  the  cities.  We  are  so  familiar  with  the  system 
of  two  Houses,  from  its  reproduction  in  countless 
later  constitutions,  that  we  are  apt  to  forget  that, 
when  the  federal  constitution  of  the  United  States 
was  drawn  up,  that  system  was  by  no  means  the 
rule,  and  that  its  adoption  in  the  constitution  of  the 
United  States  was  a  remarkable  instance  of  cleaving 
to  the  institutions  of  the  mother-country.  Though 


SYSTEM  OF  TWO   CHAMBERS.  H7 

the  United  States  Senate,  the  representative  of  the 
separate  being  and  political  equality  of  the  States, 
has  some  functions  quite  different  from  those  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  yet  it  could  hardly  have  come  into 
the  heads  of  constitution-makers  who  were  not 
familiar  with  the  House  of  Lords.  I  may  here 
quote  the  remark  of  an  acute  American  friend  that 
the  Senate  is  as  much  superior  to  the  House  of 
Lords  as  the  House  of  Representatives  is  inferior 
to  the  House  of  Commons.  A  neat  epigram  of  this 
kind  is  seldom  literally  true  ;  but  this  one  undoubt 
edly  has  truth  in  it.  It  follows  almost  necessarily 
from  the  difference  between  the  British  and  Ameri 
can  constitutions  that  the  Upper  House  of  the 
American  Congress  should  be  in  character  and  pub 
lic  estimation  really  the  Upper  House.  In  Great 
Britain  no  statesman  of  the  first  rank  and  in  the 
vigour  of  life  has  any  temptation  to  exchange  the 
House  of  Commons  for  the  House  of  Lords.  By 
so  doing  he  would  leave  an  assembly  of  far  greater 
practical  authority  for  one  of  much  less.  But  in 
the  United  States  such  a  statesman  has  every  temp-, 
tation  to  leave  the  House  of  Representatives  for  the 
Senate  as  soon  as  he  can.  As  neither  House  can 
directly  overthrow  a  Government  in  the  way  that 
the  House  of  Commons  can  in  England,  while  the 
Senate  has  a  share  in  various  acts  of  the  Executive 


118  JMPRESSIOXS   OF  T11K   UXITED  STATED 

power  with  which  the  House  of  Representatives 
has  nothing  to  do,  the  Senate  is  clearly  the  assembly 
of  greater  authority.  Its  members,  chosen  for  six 
years  by  the  State  Legislatures,  while  the  Repre 
sentatives  are  chosen  by  the  people  for  two  years, 
have  every  advantage  as  to  the  tenure  of  their  seats, 
and  it  is  not  wonderful  to  find  that  re-election  is  far 
more  the  rule  in  the  Senate  than  in  the  House.  I 
had  to  explain  more  than  once  that  it  was  a  rare 
thing  in  England  for  a  member  of  Parliament  to 
lose  his  seat,  unless  he  had  given  some  offence  to  his 
own  party,  or  unless  the  other  party  had  grown 
strong  enough  to  bring  in  a  man  of  its  own.  In 
America,  it  seems,  it  is  not  uncommon  for  a  Repre 
sentative  to  be  dismissed  by  his  constituents  of  his 
own  party,  simply  because  it  is  thought  that  he  has 
sat  long  enough,  and  because  another  man  would 
like  the  place.  Here  the  difference  between  paid 
and  unpaid  members  comes  in  :  where  members  are 
paid,  there  will  naturally  be  a  larger  stock  of  eager 
candidates  to  choose  from.  I  was  present  at  sittings 
of  both  Houses,  and  there  was  certainly  a  most 
marked  difference  in  point  of  order  and  decorum 
between  the  two.  The  Senate  seemed  truly  a  Se 
nate;  the  House  of  Representatives  struck  me  as 
a  scene  of  mere  hubbub  rather  than  of  real  debate. 
One  incident  specially  struck  me  as  illustrating  the 


THE  STATIC  LEGISLATURE.  119 

constitutional  provision  which  shuts  out  the  Minis 
ters  of  the  President  from  Congress.  One  Repre 
sentative  made  a  fierce  attack  on  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  and  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  was  not  there 
to  defend  himself.  Generally  I  should  say,  the 
House  of  Representatives  and  the  Legislative  bodies 
which  answer  to  it  in  the  several  States  illustrate 
Lord  Macaulay's  saying  about  the  necessity  of  a 
Ministry  to  keep  a  Parliament  in  order.  One  re 
sult  of  its  absence  is  the  far  larger  powers  which  in 
these  assemblies  are  given  to  the  Speaker.  And 
this  is  again  attended  by  the  danger  of  turning  the 
Speaker  himself  into  the  instrument  of  a  party. 

The  differences  of  procedure  between  our  Houses 
of  Parliament  and  the  American  assemblies,  both  of 
the  Union  and  of  the  States,  are  very  curious  and 
interesting,  specially  just  now  when  the  question  of 
Parliamentary  procedure  has  taken  to  itself  so  much 
attention.  But  I  must  go  on  to  give  my  impressions 
of  other  matters,  rather  than  attempt  to  enlarge  on 
a  point  which  I  cannot  say  that  I  have  specially 
studied.  The  State  legislatures  are  the  features  of 
American  political  life  which  are  most  distinctive 
of  the  federal  system,  and  to  which  there  cannot  be 
anything  exactly  answering  among  ourselves.  It 
must  always  be  remembered  that  a  State  legislature 
does  not  answer  to  a  town  council  or  a  court  of 


120  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

quarter  sessions.  It  is  essentially  a  parliament, 
though  a  parliament  with  limited  functions,  and 
which  can  never  be  called  on  to  deal  with  the  hHi- 

O 

est  questions  of  all.  The  range  of  the  State  legis 
latures  is  positively  very  wide,  and  takes  in  most 
things  which  concern  the  daily  affairs  of  mankind. 
But  a  large  part  of  their  business  commonly  con 
sists  in  the  passing  of  private  bills,  acts  of  incor 
poration,  and  the  like.  Some  States  seem  to  have 
found  that  constant  legislation  on  such  matters  was 
not  needed,  and  have  therefore  thought  good  that 
their  legislatures  should  meet  only  every  other  year. 
In  Pennsylvania,  therefore,  where  I  had  good  op 
portunities  of  studying  some  other  matters,  I  had  no 
opportunity  of  studying  the  working  of  a  State 
legislature.  "When  I  was  there,  municipal  life  was 
in  full  vigour  in  Philadelphia,  but  State  life  was 
dead  at  Harrisburg.  But  I  came  in  for  a  sight  of 
the  legislature  of  New  York  at  the  time  of  the 
"  dead  lock"  early  in  1882.  For  week  after  week 
the  Lower  House  found  it  impossible  to  elect  a 
Speaker.  And  this  was  not  the  result  of  absolute 
equality  between  the  two  great  parties.  It  was  be 
cause  a  very  small  body  of  men,  who  had  no  chance 
of  carrying  a  candidate  from  among  themselves, 
thought  fit,  in  ballot  after  ballot,  to  hinder  the  elec 
tion  of  the  acknowledged  candidate  of  either  side. 


THE  GOVERNOR. 


This  illustrates  the  result  of  the  rule  which  requires 
an  absolute  majority.  I  pointed  out  to  several 
friends  on  the  spot  that  no  such  dead  lock  could 
have  happened  in  the  British  House  of  Commons, 
where  the  candidate  who  received  most  votes  would 
have  been  elected,  without  any  further  reckonings. 
I  know  not  how  far  the  existence  of  a  regular  Mi 
nistry  and  Opposition  would  hinder  the  possibility 
of  this  particular  kind  of  scandal  ;  but  it  is  hard  to 
conceive  the  existence  of  a  ministry  in  our  sense  in 
a  State  constitution.  Even  in  our  still  dependent 
colonies,  the  reproduction  of  our  system  of  minis 
tries  going  in  and  out  in  consequence  of  a  parlia 
mentary  vote  may  be  thought  to  be  somewhat  out 
of  place.  Still  the  Governor,  named  by  an  exter 
nal  power,  has  much  of  the  position  of  a  king,  and 
his  relations  to  his  ministry  and  his  parliament  can 
in  a  manner  reproduce  those  of  the  sovereign  in  the 
mother-country.  But  it  is  hard  to  conceive  an 
elective  Governor,  above  all  the  Governor  of  such 
a  State  as  Ehode  Island  or  Delaware,  working 
through  the  conventionalities  of  a  responsible  mi 
nistry.  I  would  indeed  go  further,  and  say  that  the 
ministerial  system  is  out  of  place  in  a  republic 
of  any  kind  and  on  any  scale.  The  whole  idea  of 
the  responsible  ministry  is  that  they  stand  in 
front  of  the  irresponsible  king,  that  his  acts  are 


122  LWltESSIOXS  OF  THE    UNITED  STATES. 

done  by  their  advice,  and  that  they  take  on  them 
selves  the  praise  or  blame  of  them.  The  king 
reigns,  but  his  ministers  govern.  But  in  a  re 
public  we  naturally  expect  that  the  President, 
Governor,  or  other  chief  magistrate,  chosen,  there 
fore  chosen  presumably  for  his  personal  fitness, 
will  himself  govern,  within  the  range  of  such  pow 
ers  as  the  law  gives  him.  He  may  need  ministers 
as  assistants  in  governing ;  he  does  not  need  them 
to  take  on  themselves  the  responsibility  of  his  acts. 
Indeed  even  in  sncli  a  State  as  New  York  there  is 
still  something  patriarchal  about  the  office  of  Go 
vernor.  While  I  was  in  the  capitol  at  Albany,  the 
friends  of  a  condemned  criminal  came  to  plead 
with  the  Governor  in  person  for  the  exercise  of  his 
prerogative  of  mercy.  Now  the  population  of  the 
State  of  New  York,  swollen  by  one  overgrown  city, 
is  greater  than  that  of  Ireland ;  even  in  its  natural 
state,  it  would  be  much  greater  than  that  of  Scot 
land.  I  thought  of  the  days  when  the  King  did 
sit  in  the  gate. 

The  personal  heads  of  the  Union,  the  State,  and 
the  City,  the  President,  the  Governor,  the  Mayor, 
all  come  from  English  tradition.  If  we  study  the 
commonwealths  of  other  ages  and  countries,  we 
shall  see  that  this  great  position  given  to  a  single 
man,  though  by  no  means  without  precedent,  is  by 


THE  MAY  OH. 

no  means  the   rule.     The  title  of  Governor  espe 
cially  is  directly  handed  on  from  the  days  before  in 
dependence.     It  would  hardly  have  suggested  itself 
to  the  founders  of  commonwealths  which  had  not 
been  used  to  the  Governor  sent  by  the  King.     The 
powers  of  the  Governor  and  the  duration  of  his 
office   differ    widely  in   different    States,  even   in 
neighbouring    and    closely  kindred    States.      The 
Governor  of  Massachusetts  still  keeps  up   a  good 
deal  of  dignity,  while  the  Governor  of  Connecticut 
is  a  much  smaller  person.     But  the   Governor  of 
Connecticut  holds  office  for  a  longer  time  than  his 
brother  of  Massachusetts.     The  Mayor  too  does  not 
hold  exactly  the   same  place   in  every  city.     At 
Brooklyn,  when  I  was  there,  a  great  point  in  the 
way   of  reform  was  held  to   have  been  won  by 
greatly  enlarging  the  powers  of  the  Mayor.     Men 
who  can  well  judge  hold  that  purity  of  administra 
tion  is  best   attained   by  vesting  large  powers  in 
single  persons,  elective,  responsible,  acting  under 
the  eye  of  the  public.     And  I  was  told  that,  even 
in  the  worst  cases,  better  results  come  from  the 
election  of  single  officers  than  from  the  election  of 
larger  numbers.     The  popular  election  of  Judges, 
which  has  been  introduced  into  many  States,  is  one 
of  the  things  which  British  opinion  would  be  most 
united   in   condemning.     "We   should  all  agree  in 


124  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

wishing  that  both  the  Federal  courts  and  the  courts 
of  those  States  which,  like  Massachusetts,  cleave  to 
older  modes  of  appointment  may  stay  as  they  are. 
But,  from  what  I  could  hear,  both  in  New  York 
and  in  other  States  which  have  adopted  the  elec 
tive-system,  the  results  are  better  than  might  have 
been  expected.  Each  party,  it  is  said,  makes  it  a 
point  of  honour  to  name  fairly  competent  candidates 
for  the  judicial  office.  So  again,  the  municipal 
administration  of  New  York  City  was  for  years  a 
byword,  and  the  name  of  Alderman  was  anything 
but  a  name  of  honour.  But,  even  in  the  worst 
times,  the  post  of  Mayor  was  almost  always  respec 
tably  filled.  Even,  so  I  was  told,  in  one  case  where 
the  previous  record  of  the  elected  Mayor  was  noto* 
riously  bad,  his  conduct  in  office  was  not  to  be 
blamed. 

The  prevalence  of  corruption  in  various  shapes  in 
various  branches  of  the  administration  of  the  United 
States  is  an  ugly  subject,  on  which  I  have  no 
special  facts  to  reveal.  The  mere  fact  of  corruption 
cannot  be  fairly  laid  to  the  charge  of  any  particular 
form  of  government,  though  particular  forms  of 
government  will  doubtless  cause  corruption  to  take 
different  shapes.  It  is  absurd  to  infer  that  a  demo 
cratic  or  a  federal  form  of  government  has  a  neces 
sary  and  special  tendency  to  corruption,  when  it  is 


THE  SYSTEM  OF  "SPOILS."  125 

certain  that  corruption  has  been  and  is  just  as  rife 
under  governments  of  other  kinds.  The  great 
source  of  corruption  in  America  is  doubtless  the 
system  of  "  spoils"  in  the  administration  of  federal 
patronage,  the  system  by  which,  on  every  party 
success  in  the  choice  of  a  President,  a  clean  sweep 
is  made,  not  only  of  the  holders  of  high  political 
office,  who  must  naturally  expect  to  be  changed, 
but  of  federal  office-bearers,  great  and  small,  through 
out  the  country.  Such  a  system  is  of  course  in 
consistent  with  the  existence  of  any  efficient  civil 
service ;  it  opens  the  way  for  a  vast  deal  of  corrup 
tion  in  various  shapes,  and  it  sets  the  example  for  a 
vast  deal  of  corruption  in  other  branches.  To  me, 
I  must  confess,  the  feeling  which  it  takes  for 
granted  seems  somewhat  strange.  The  love  of 
office,  in  the  shape  which  it  often  takes  in  America, 
is  rather  hard  to  understand.  I  can  understand  a 
man  taking  a  -great  post,  say  a  foreign  legation  or 
a  seat  in  the  cabinet,  even  with  the  certainty  that  it 
must  be  resigned  at  the  end  of  four  years.  I  do 
not  understand  any  one  wishing  for  smaller  offices 
which  carry  no  special  dignity  or  authority,  and 
which  must  be  an  interruption  to  a  man's  ordinary 
career,  whatever  that  may  be.  I  can  understand  a 
man  entering  the  post-office  or  any  other  branch  of 
the  public  service,  as  the  work  of  his  life ;  I  cannot 


126  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

understand  a  man  wishing  to  be  a  local  postmaster 
for  four  years  and  no  longer.  Yet  the  number  of 
office-seekers — the  word  has  becomingly  followed 
the  thing — in  America  is  very  wonderful.  But,  as 
far  as  I  can  see,  this  system  is  condemned,  in  theory 
at  least,  by  all  except  those  who  hope  to  profit  by 
it.  Still  a  system  in  which  so  many  are  interested, 
and  in  which  so  many  more  hope  that  they  may  be, 
will,  it  is  to  be  feared,  prove  hard  to  get  rid  of. 
But  I  imagine  that  the  elections  of  the  fall  of  1882 
must  be  taken,  less  as  a  party  victory  of  the  Demo 
cratic  side,  than  as  a  protest  against  this  and  other 
forms  of  corruption.  And,  while  I  am  revising 
what  I  wrote  a  few  months  back,  I  see  that  the 
question  of  Civil  Service  Reform  is  practically  taken 
up  by  the  Federal  Legislature.  In  this  matter 
the  loss  of  Garfield  will  doubtless  be  deeply  felt. 
"When  I  reached  America,  the  immediate  mourning 
for  the  murdered  President  was  hardly  over;  be 
fore  I  came  away,  the  natural  reaction  lu.d  begun ; 
some  newspapers  had  begun  to  speak  against  his 
memory.  Yet  the  general  conviction  seemed  very 
deep  that  the  loss  was  a  real  and  heavy  one,  and 
that  the  great  work  of  purifying  the  Federal 
administration  had  undergone  a  great  check.  I 
always  heard  Garfield's  position  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  spoken  of  as  something  quite  ex- 


CORRUPTION.  127 

ceptional,  as  an  instance  of  the  direct  influence  of 
an  upright  and  noble  personal  character.  The  loss 
to  his  country  was  great ;  for  himself  we  may  say 
that  it  was  well  that  he  did  not  recover.  "Worthy 
of  honour  as  the  real  Garfield  was,  no  man,  not  Mar 
cus  or  Alfred  or  Saint  Lewis,  could  have  lived  up 
to  the  standard  of  the  ideal  Garfield. 

In  my  own  small  experience  what  most  struck 
me  was  the  way  in  which,  in  discussing  matters  of 
almost  every  kind,  corruption  seemed  to  be  taken 
for  granted  as  a  matter  of  course.     This  is  akin  to 
the  curious  fact  that  the  word  "  politics"  and  "  poli 
tician"  should  have  put  on  a  meaning  which,  if  not 
positively  discreditable,  has  a  tendency  that  way. 
Among  ourselves  I  do  not  think   that   the   word 
"politics"   has  at  all  a  bad  sense;    but  the  word 
"  politician"  is  now  seldom  used,  and,  when  it  was 
more  commonly  used,  as  it  was  in  my  boyhood,  it 
had  something  disparaging  about  it.     The  tendency 
I   mean,  that  of   assuming   corruption  where  one 
would  not  have  thought  that  the  idea  could  have 
come  in,  is  one  of  which  some  instances  will  be 
more  in  place  further  on.     It  often  came  out  in 
discussing  local  matters,   sometimes  matters  which 
seemed  to  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  poli 
tics.     This  struck  me  specially  in  the  State  of  New 
York,  and  sometimes  with  reference  to  very  small 


128  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

matters  indeed.  As  for  strictly  electoral  corrup 
tion,  it  seems  to  take  different  shapes  on  the  two 
sides  of  Ocean.  In  America  I  heard  something  of 
bribery  of  the  electors,  but  certainly  very  much 
less  than  we  are  used  to  in  England.  After  I  came 
back  to  England,  I  was  walking  in  an  English  city 
with  an  American  and  an  English  friend.  We 
chanced  to  meet  one  of  those  gentlemen  who  were 
unlucky  in  the  early  days  of  the  present  Parlia 
ment.  When  he  was  gone  by,  my  English  friend 
pointed  him  out  to  the  American  as  "  the  corrupt 
member."  The  phrase  was  perhaps  not  happily 
chosen ;  at  any  rate  it  was  altogether  misunder 
stood.  When  all  that  was  meant  was  corruption  of 
the  electors,  the  thought  suggested  to  the  American 
mind  was  a  corrupt  use  of  his  vote  in  Parliament, 
which  I  need  not  say  was  not  thought  of  for  a 
moment.  At  the  elections  themselves,  the  danger 
which,  at  Philadelphia  at  least,  seemed  most  to  be 
feared  was  not  bribery,  but  fraudulent  returns. 
These,  I  think,  are  never  heard  of  among  us.  I 
never  remember  to  have  heard  of  any  Mayor  or 
Sheriff  being  suspected  of  wilfully  making  other 
than  a  true  return  of  the  votes  actually  given,  by 
whatever  means  those  votes  might  have  been  ob 
tained.  With  us  the  returning  officer  and  his  agents 
are  held  to  be  at  least  officially  impartial ;  it  is  their 


.4  MUNICIPAL  ELECTION.  129 

business  to  put  their  party  politics  in  their  pockets 
for  the  time.  I  know  not  how  things  are  done  in 
those  parliamentary  boroughs  which  have  no  cor 
porations  ;  in  an  ordinary  county  or  borough,  the 
Sheriff  or  Mayor  has  the  advantage  of  not  being 
appointed  with  any  direct  reference  to  the  election ; 
he  is  appointed  for  other  purposes  also,  and  an 
election  may  or  may  not  happen  during  his  term 
of  office.  But  when  election-inspectors  are  elected 
on  the  general  electoral  ticket,  that  is,  when  the 
official  person  represents  the  party  dominant  in  the 
place,  it  is  clear  that  the  temptations  to  unfairness 
are  greatly  increased. 

I  was  greatly  interested  in  the  municipal  election 
which  I  saw  at  Philadelphia  early  in  1882.  The 
municipal  administration  of  that  city  has,  like  that 
of  New  York,  long  had  a  bad  name.  Corruption, 
jobbery,  the  rule  of  rings  and  "  bosses,"  and  above 
all,  what  to  us  sounds  odd,  the  corrupt  administra 
tion  of  the  Gas  Trust,  were  loudly  complained  of. 
And  I  certainly  am  greatly  deceived  if  what  I  saw 
and  studied  was  anything  but  a  vigorous  and 
honest  effort  to  bring  in  a  better  state  of  things. 
Kepublicans  and  Democrats  brought  themselves  to 
forget  their  party  differences,  or  rather  party 
names,  and  to  work  together  for  the  welfare  and 
honour  of  their  common  city.  The  movement  was 


130  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

described  to  me,  in  a  way  at  which  I  have  already 
hinted,  as  an  union  of  the  honest  men  of  both  par 
ties  against  the  rogues  of  both  parties.  And  such, 
as  far  as  I  could  judge,  it  really  was.  I  did  indeed 
hear  it  whispered  that  such  fits  of  virtue  were 
not  uncommon,  both  in  Philadelphia  and  elsewhere, 
that  they  wrought  some  small  measure  of  reform  for 
a  year  or  two,  but  that,  in  order  to  keep  the  ground 
that  had  been  gained,  a  continuous  effort  was 
needed  which  men  were  not  willing  to  make,  and 
that  things  fell  back  into  their  old  corrupt  state. 
And  it  is  plain  that  the  man  who  gains  by  main 
taining  corruption  is  likely  to  make  great  habitual 
efforts  to  keep  up  a  corrupt  system,  while  the  man 
who  opposes  it,  who  gains  nothing  by  opposing  it, 
but  who  gives  up  his  time,  his  quiet,  and  his  ordi 
nary  business,  for  the  public  good,  is  tempted  at 
every  moment  to  relax  in  his  efforts.  This  failure 
of  continued  energy  is  just  what  Demosthenes 
complains  of  in  the  Athenians  of  his  day ;  and  ex 
perience  does  seem  to  show  that  here  is  a  weak  side 
of  democratic  government.  To  keep  up  under  a 
popular  system  an  administration  at  once  pure  and 
vigorous  does  call  for  constant  efforts  on  the  part  of 
each  citizen  which  it  needs  some  self-sacrifice  to 
make.  The  old  saying  that  what  is  everybody's 
business  is  nobody's  business  becomes  true  as  re- 


DISLODGEMENT  OF  "BOSSES."  131 

gards  the  sounder  part  of  the  community.     But  it 
follows  next  that  what  is  everybody's  business  be 
comes  specially  the  business  of  those  whose  busi 
ness  one  would  least  wish  it  to  be.     Yet  my  Phila- 
delphian  friends  assured   me  that   they  had  been 
steadily  at  work  for  ten  years,  that  they  had  made 
some  way  every  year,  but  that  last  year  they  had 
made  more  way  than  they  had  ever  made  before. 
The  immediate  business  was  to  dislodge  "  bosses"  and 
other  corrupt  persons  from  the  municipal  councils, 
and  to  put  in  their  stead  men    of   character   and 
ability,  whether  ^Republican  or  Democratic  in  poli 
tics.     And  this  object,  surely  one  much  to  be  sought 
for,  was,  as  far  as  I  could  see,  largely  carried   out. 
I  did  indeed  hear  the   murmurs  of    one   or   two 
stern  Eepublicans,  who  could  not  bring  themselves 
to  support  a  list  which  contained  any  Democratic 
names.     But  the  other  view  seemed  to  be  the  popu 
lar  one.     I  read  much  of  the  fugitive  election  litera 
ture,  and  attended  one  of  the  chief  ward-meetings. 
I  was  greatly  struck  by  the  general  hearty  enthusi 
asm  in  what  was  not  a  party  struggle,  but  an  honest 
effort  for  something  above  party.     The   speaking 
was  vigorous,  straightforward,  often  in  its  way  elo 
quent.     It  was  somewhat  more  personal  than  we  are 
used  to  in  England,  even  at  an  election.     But  here 
again  the  comparison  is  perhaps  not  a  fair  one.     As 


132  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

I  before  said,  I  know  nothing  of  English  municipal 
elections,  and  the  Philadelphian  reformers  had  to 
deal  with  evils  which  have  no  parallel  in  the  broader 
walks  of  English  political  life.  Whatever  may  be 
our  side  in  politics,  we  have  no  reason  to  suspect 
our  opponents  of  directly  filling  their  pockets  at 
the  public  cost. 

A  municipal  election  is  of  more  importance  in 
America  than  it  is  in  England,  because  of  the  large 
powers,  amounting  to  powers  of  local  legislation, 
which  are  vested  in  the  cities.  This  would  seem  to 
be  the  natural  tendency  of  a  Federal  system.  It 
would  indeed  be  inaccurate  to  say  that  the  City  is 
to  the  State  what  the  State  is  to  the  Union.  For 
the  powers  of  the  city  may  of  course  be  modified 
by  an  act  of  the  State  Legislature,  just  as  the  pow 
ers  of  an  English  municipal  corporation  may  be 
modified  by  an  Act  of  Parliament,  while  no  mere 
act  of  Congress,  nothing  short  of  a  constitutional 
amendment,  can  touch  the  powers  of  a  sovereign 
State.  But  it  is  natural  for  a  member  of  an  Union, 
keeping  independent  powers  by  right,  to  allow  to 
the  members  of  its  own  body  a  large  amount  of 
local  independence,  held  not  of  right  but  of  grant. 
It  strikes  us  as  strange  that,  owing  to  the  American 
electoral  arrangements,  no  man  can  stand  up  in 
Congress  and  say  "  I  am  member  for  New  York  or 


"CITY'    AND  "TOWN."  133 

Boston  or  Philadelphia ;"  but,  as  to  its  own  local 
affairs,  an  American  city  is  more  thoroughly  a  com 
monwealth,  it  has  more  of  the  feelings  of  a  com 
monwealth,  than  an  English  city  has.  As  for  the 
use  of  the  name,  we  must  remember  that  in  the 
United  States  every  corporate  town  is  called  a 
"city,"  while,  in  some  States  at  least,  what  we 
should  call  a  market-town  bears  the  legal  style  of 
"  village."  In  New  England  the  cities  are  inter 
lopers.  They  have  largely  obscured  the  older  con 
stitution  of  the  towns.  The  word  town  in  New 
England  does  not,  as  with  us,  mean  a  collection  of 
houses,  perhaps  forming  a  political  community,  per 
haps  not.  It  means  a  certain  space  on  the  earth's 
surface,  which  may  or  may  not  contain  a  town  in 
our  sense,  but  whose  inhabitants  form  a  political 
community  in  either  case.  Its  assembly  is  the  town- 
meeting,  the  survival,  or  rather  revival,  of  the  old 
Teutonic  assembly  on  the  soil  of  the  third  England. 
This  primitive  institution  best  keeps  its  ancient 
character  in  the  country  districts  and  among  the 
smaller  towns  in  our  sense  of  the  word.  Where  a 
"city"  has  been  incorporated,  the  ancient  constitu 
tion  has  lost  much  of  its  importance.  It  has  not 
been  abolished.  In  some  cases  at  least  the  two  con 
stitutions,  of  town  and  city,  the  Teutonic  primary 
assembly  and  the  later  system  of  representative 


134  IXPSJSSSfO^S  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

bodies,  go  on  side  by  side  in  the  same  place.  Each 
has  its  own  range  of  subjects  ;  but  it  is  the  tendency 
of  the  newer  institution  to  overshadow  the  older. 
I  deeply  regret  that  I  left  America  without  seeing 
a  New  England  town-meeting  with  my  own  eyes. 
It  was  a  thing  which  I  had  specially  wished  to  see, 
if  only  in  order  to  compare  it  with  what  I  had  seen 
in  past  years  in  Uri  and  Appenzell.  But  when  I 
was  first  in  New  England,  it  was  the  wrong  time  of 
the  year,  and  my  second  visit  was  very  short.  I 
thus  unavoidably  lost  a  very  favourable  chance  of 
seeing  what  I  conceive  that  the  English  parish  ves 
try  ought  to  be  but  is  not.  And  I  am  not  sure 
that  some  of  my  New  England  friends  did  not  look 
a  little  black  at  me,  because  the  immediate  cause  of 
my  failure  was  an  old-standing  engagement  to  a 
gentleman  of  New  York  of  Democratic  principles. 

When  engaged  in  comparing  the  constitutions  of 
England  and  of  the  United  States,  I  have  some 
times  gone  so  far  as  to  think  that  it  might  be  a  good 
test  of  those  who  have  and  those  who  have  not 
made  a  scientific  study  of  comparative  politics,  to 
see  whether  they  are  most  struck  by  the  likenesses 
or  by  the  unlikenesses  of  the  two  systems.  The 
close  analogy  in  the  apportionment  of  power  among 
the  elements  of  the  State,  the  general  relations  of 


THE  AMERICAN  CONSTITUTION.  135 

President,  Senate,  and  House  of  Representatives, 
are  points  of  likeness  of  far  more  moment  even 
than  the  difference  in  the  form  of  the  Executive, 
much  more  so  than  the  different  constitution  of  the 
Upper  House.  The  differences  are  indeed  many 
and  important ;  the  trial  is  to  see  the  real  likeness 
through  the  differences.  The  American  constitu 
tion  in  short,  as  I  have  rather  made  it  my  business 
to  preach,  is  the  English  constitution  with  such 
changes — very  great  and  important  changes  beyond 
doubt — as  change  of  circumstances  made  needful. 
But  as  those  circumstances  have  certainly  not  been 
changed  back  again,  it  is  at  least  not  likely  that  the 
constitution  of  America  will  ever  be  brought  nearer 
than  it  now  is  to  the  constitution  of  England,  how 
ever  likely  it  may  be  that  the  constitution  of  Eng 
land  may  some  day  be  brought  nearer  to  the  consti 
tution  of  America.  It  was  therefore  with  un 
feigned  wonder  that  I  read  the  reflexions  of  an  Eng 
lish  member  of  Parliament  who  lately  gave  the 
world  his  impressions  of  American  travel.  He,  too, 
was  struck  with  the  likeness  between  the  two  sys 
tems  ;  but  the  practical  inference  which  he  drew 
from  the  likeness  was  that  the  American  system 
might  easily  be  brought  into  complete  conformity 
with  the  English  model.  The  President  was  so  like 
a  King  that  it  would  be  easy  to  change  him  into 


136  IMPRESSIONS  OF  TI1E   UNITED  STATES. 

one ;  the  Senate  was  so  like  a  House  of  Lords  that 
it  would  be  easy  to  change  it  into  one.  It  only 
needed  to  bring  the  hereditary  principle  into  both 
institutions,  and  the  thing  would  be  done  at  once. 
Yes;  only  how  could  the  hereditary  principle  be 
brought  inj  Where  are  the  hereditary  king  and 
the  hereditary  lords  to  be  found  ?  This  ingenious 
political  projector  forgot  that  you  cannot  call  heredi 
tary  kings  and  hereditary  lords  into  being  by  a  con 
stitutional  amendment.  If  one  could  ever  be 
tempted  to  use  the  ugly  and  outlandish  word  pres 
tige,  it  would  be  to  explain  the  position  held  by 
such  hereditary  elements  in  a  free  state.  Where 
they  exist,  they  certainly  have  a  kind  of  effect  on 
the  mind  which  can  hardly  be  accounted  for  by  any 
rational  principle,  and  which  does  savour  of  some 
thing  like  sleight-of-hand.  Where  they  exist,  their 
existence  is  the  best  argument  in  their  favour,  and 
by  virtue  of  that  argument  they  may  go  on  ex 
isting  for  ages.  But  you  cannot  create  them  at 
will.  A  deep  truth  was  uttered  by  the  genealo 
gist  who  lamented  the  hard  fate  of  Adam  in  that 
he  could  not  possibly  employ  himself  with  his 
own  favourite  study.  And  in  no  time  or  place 
wrould  an  attempt  at  creating  hereditary  offices  of 
any  kind  seem  to  be  more  hopeless  than  in  the 
United  States  at  the  present  day.  Genealogy 


NO  HEREDITARY  TENDENCIES.  137 

is  a  favourite  American  study;  but  it  is  not 
studied  with  any  political  object.  The  destiny  of 
the  country  has  gone  steadily  against  the  growth 
of  any  hereditary  traditions.  There  has  been  no 
opportunity,  such  as  there  often  has  been  in  other 
commonwealths,  for  the  growth  of  an.  ascendency 
in  particular  families  which  might  form  the  kernel 
of  an  aristocratic  body.  The  first  President  and 
nearly  all  his  most  eminent  successors  left  no  direct 
male  descendants  or  no  descendants  at  all.  It  is 
only  in  the  family  of  the  second  President  that  any 
thing  like  hereditary  eminence  has  shown  itself,  and 
the  two  Adamses  were  the  two  among  the  earlier 
and  greater  Presidents  who  failed  to  obtain  re-elec 
tion.  Since  their  days  everything  has  tended  more 
and  more  in  the  opposite  direction  ;  every  year  that 
the  Union  has  lasted  has  made  such  dreams  as  those 
of  our  English  legislator  more  and  more  utterly 
vain.  When  a  thing  is  said  to  lie  "beyond  the 
range  of  practical  politics,"  it  commonly  means 
that  it  will  become  the  most  immediately  practical 
of  all  questions  a  few  months  hence.  But  one 
might  really  use  the  phrase  in  safety  when  dealing 
with  such  a  scheme  as  that  of  changing  the  elective 
President  into  a  hereditary  King  and  the  elective 
Senate  into  a  hereditary  House  of  Lords. 


138  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

X. 

My  contention  throughout  my  whole  argument  is 
that  the  great  land  of  which  I  am  speaking  is  still 
essentially  an  English  land.  It  is  no  small  witness 
to  the  toughness  of  fibre  in  the  English  folk  wher 
ever  it  settles  that  it  is  so.  A  land  must  be  reck 
oned  as  English  where  a  great  majority  of  the 
people  must  still  be  of  English  descent,  where  the 
speech  is  still  the  speech  of  England,  where  valu 
able  contributions  are  constantly  made  to  English 
literature,  where  the  law  is  still  essentially  the 
law  of  England,  and-  where  valuable  contributions 

O  / 

are  constantly  made  to  English  jurisprudence.  A 
land  must  be  reckoned  as  English  where  the 
English  kernel  is  so  strong  as  to  draw  to  itself 
every  foreign  element,  where  the  foreign  settler  is 
adopted  into  the  English  home  of  an  English  people, 
where  he  or  his  children  exchange  the  speech  of 
their  elder  dwellings  for  the  English  speech  of  the 
land.  Men  of  various  nationalities  are,  on  Ameri 
can  ground,  easily  changed  into  "  good  Americans," 
and  the  "  good  American"  must  be,  in  every  sense 
that  is  not  strictly  geographical  or  political,  a  good 
Englishman.  And,  as  regards  a  large  part  of  the 
foreign  settlers,  no  man  of  real  English  feeling  can 
wish  to  give  them  other  than  a  hearty  welcome. 


FOHEIGN  ELEMENTS.  139 

The  German,  and  still  more  the  Scandinavian,  set 
tlers  are  simply  men  of  our  own  race  who  have 
lagged  behind  in  the  western  march,  but  who  have 
at  last  made  it  at  a  single  pull,  without  tarrying  for 
a  thousand  years  in  the  isle  of  Britain.  But  there 
are-  other  settlers,  other  inmates,  with  whose  presence 
the  land,  one  would  think,  might  be  happy  to  dis 
pense.  I  must  here  speak  my  own  mind,  at  the 
great  risk  of  offending  people  on  more  sides  than 
one.  Men  better  versed  in  American  matters  than 
myself  point  out  to  me  the  fact  that  the  negro  vote 
balances  the  Irish  vote.  But  one  may  be  allowed 
to  think  that  an  Aryan  land  might  do  better  still 
without  any  negro  vote,  that  a  Teutonic  land  might 
do  better  still  without  any  Irish  vote.  And  what 
I  venture  to  say  on  the  housetops  has  been  whis 
pered  in  my  ear  in  closets  by  not  a  few  in  America 
who  fully  understand  the  state  and  the  needs  of 
their  country.  Very  many  approved  when  I  sug 
gested  that  the  best  remedy  for  whatever  was  amiss 
would  be  if  every  Irishman  should  kill  a  negro  and 
be  handed  for  it.  Those  who  dissented  dissented 

O 

most  commonly  on  the  ground  that,  if  there  were 
no  Irish  and  110  negroes,  they  would  not  be  able  to 
get  any  domestic  servants.  The  most  serious  objec 
tion  came  from  Rhode  Island,  where  they  have  no 
capital  punishment,  and  where  they  had  no  wish  to 


140  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

keep  the  Irish  at  the  public  expense.  Let  no  one 
think  that  I  have  any  ill-feeling  towards  the  Irish 
people.  In  their  own  island  I  have  every  sympathy 
with  them.  More  than  eight  years  back  I  argued 
in  the  pages  of  the  "  Fortnightly  Review"  on  behalf 
of  Home  Rule,  or  of  any  form  of  Irish  indepen 
dence  which  did  not  involve,  as  some  schemes  then 
proposed  did  involve,  the  dependence  of  Great 
Britain.  I  should  indeed  be  inconsistent  if  I  were 
to  refuse  to  the  Irishman  what  I  have  sought  to  win 
for  the  Greek,  the  Bulgarian,  and  the  Dalmatian. 
Nor  is  it  wonderful  or  blameworthy  if  men  who 
have  left  their  old  homes  to  escape  from  the  wrongs 
of  foreign  rule  should  carry  with  them  -into  their 
new  homes  the  memory  of  the  wrongs  which  drove 
them  from  the  old.  I  share  a  natural  indignation 
against  those  who,  either  in  Ireland  or  in  America, 
make  a  good  cause  to  be  evil  spoken  of;  but,  as 
long  as  the  Irishman  seeks  to  compass  his  ends  only 
by  honourable  means,  we  have  no  right  to  blame 
him  merely  because  his  ends  are  different  from  ours. 
But  all  this  is  perfectly  consistent  with  the  manifest 
fact  that  the  Irish  element  is,  in  the  English  lands 
on  both  sides  of  the  Ocean,  a  mischievous  element. 
The  greatest  object  of  all  is  for  the  severed  branches 
of  the  English  folk  to  live  in  the  fullest  measure 
of  friendship  and  unity  that  is  consistent  with  their 


THE  IRISH    VOTE.  141 

severed  state.  Now  the  Irish  element  in  America 
is  the  greatest  of  all  hindrances  in  the  way  of  this 
happy  state  of  things.  It  is  the  worst,  and  perhaps 
the  strongest,  of  the  causes  which  help  to  give  a  bad 
name  to  American  politics.  Political  men  in  all 
times  and  places  lie  under  strong  temptations  to  say 
and  do  things  which  they  otherwise  would  not  say 
and  do,  in  order  to  gain  some  party  advantage. 
But  on  no  political  men  of  any  time  or  place  has 
this  kind  of  influence  been  more  strongly  brought 
to  bear  than  it  is  on  political  men  in  the  United 
States  who  wish  to  gain  the  Irish  vote.  The  im 
portance  of  that  vote  grows  and  grows ;  no  party, 
no  leading  man,  can  afford  to  despise  it.  Parties 
and  men  are  therefore  driven  into  courses  to  which 
otherwise  they  would  have  no  temptation  to  take, 
and  those  for  the  most  part  courses  which  are  un 
friendly  to  Great  Britain.  Any  ill-feeling  which 
other  causes  may  awaken  between  the  two  severed 
branches  of  the  English  people  is  prolonged  and 
strengthened  by  the  presence  of  the  Irish  settlers 
in  America.  In  some  minds  they  may  really  plant 
hostile  feelings  towards  Great  Britain  which  would 
otherwise  find  no  place  there.  At  any  rate  they 
plant  in  many  minds  a  habit  of  speaking  and  acting 
as  if  such  hostile  feelings  did  find  a  place,  a  habit 
which  cannot  but  lead  to  bad  effects  in  many  ways. 


IMMIXSSJOSS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

The  mere  rumour,  the  mere  thought,  of  recalling 
Mr.  Lowell  from  his  post  in  England  in  subserviency 
to  Irish  clamour  is  a  case  in  point.  That  such  a  thing 
should  even  have  been  dreamed  of,  as  it  was  last 
year,  shows  the  baleful  nature  of  Irish  influence  in 
America.  It  shows  how  specially  likely  it  is  to  stir 
up  strife  and  ill-feeling  between  Great  Britain  and 
America,  even  at  times  when,  setting  Irish  matters 
aside,  there  is  not  the  faintest  ground  of  quarrel  on 
either  side.  In  a  view  of  poetical  justice,  it  is  per 
haps  not  unreasonable  that  English  misrule  in  Ire 
land  should  be  punished  in  this  particular  shape. 
It  may  be  just  that  the  wrongs  which  we  have  done 
to  our  neighbours  should  be  paid  off  at  the  hands  of 
members  of  our  own  family.  But  the  process  is 
certainly  unpleasant  to  our  branch  of  the  family, 
and  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  can  be  any  real  gain  to 
the  other. 

But  the  Irishman  is,  after  all,  in  a  wide  sense,  one 
of  ourselves.  He  is  Aryan ;  he  is  European ;  he  is 
capable  of  being  assimilated  by  other  branches  of  the 
European  stock.  There  is  nothing  to  be  said  against 
this  or  that  Irishman  all  by  himself.  In  England,  in 
America,  in  any  other  land,  nothing  hinders  him  from 
becoming  one  with  the  people  of  the  land,  or  from 
playing  an  useful  and  honourable  part  among  them. 


ASSIMILATION.  14B 

All  that  is  needed  to  this  end  is  that  he  should  come 
all  by  himself.  It  is  only  when  Irishmen  gather  in 
such  numbers  as  to  form  an  Irish  community  capa 
ble  of  concerted  action  that  any  mischief  is  to  be 
looked  for  from  them.  The  Irish  difficulty  is  trou 
blesome  just  now ;  it  is  likely  to  be  troublesome  for 
some  time  to  come ;  but  it  is  not  likely  to  last  for 
ever.  But  the  nesro  difficulty  must  last,  either  till 

O  «/ 

the  way  has  been  found  out  by  which  the  Ethiopian 
may  change  his  skin,  or  till  either  the  white  man 
or  the  black  departs  out  of  the  land.  The  United 
States — and,  in  their  measure,  other  parts  of  the 
American  continent  and  islands — have  to  grapple 
with  a  problem  such  as  no  other  people  ever  liad  to 
grapple  with  before.  Other  communities,  from  the 
beginning  of  political  society,  have  been  either 
avowedly  or  practically  founded  on  distinctions  of 
race.  There  has  been,  to  say  the  least,  some  people 
or  nation  or  tribe  which  has  given  its  character  to 
the  whole  body,  and  by  which  other  elements  have 
been  assimilated.  In  the  United  States  this  part 
has  been  played,  as  far  as  the  white  population  is 
concerned,  by  the  original  English  kernel.  Round 
that  kernel  the  foreign  elements  have  grown ;  it  as 
similates  them ;  they  do  not  assimilate  it.  But  be 
yond  that  range  lies  another  range  where  assimila 
tion  ceases  to  be  possible.  The  eternal  laws  of 


144  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

nature,  the  eternal  distinction  of  colour,  forbid  the 
assimilation  of  the  negro.  You  may  give  him 
the  rights  of  citizenship  by  law;  you  cannot 
make  him  the  real  equal,  the  real  fellow,  of  citizens 
of  European  descent.  Never  before  in  our  world, 
the  world  of  Rome  and  of  all  that  Koine  has  in 
fluenced,  has  such  an  experiment  been  tried. 
And  this,  though  in  some  ages  of  the  Roman 
dominion  the  adoption  and  assimilation  of  men  of 
other  races  was  'carried  to  the  extremes!  point 
that  the  laws  of  nature  would  allow.  Long  before 
the  seat  of  Empire  was  moved  to  Constantinople, 
the  name  of  Roman  had  ceased  to  imply  even  a 
presumption  of  descent  from  the  old  patricians  and 
plebeians.  A  walk  through  any  collection  of 
Roman  inscriptions  will  show  how,  in  the  later 
days  of  the  undivided  Empire,  a  man  was  far 
oftener  succeeded  by  his  freedman  than  by  his 
son.  And  besides  freed  men,  strangers  of  every 
race  within  the  Empire  had  been  freely  admitted 
to  citizenship,  and  were  allowed  to  bear  the  names 
of  the  proudest  Roman  gentes.  The  Julius,  the 
Claudius,  the  Cornelius  of  those  days  was  for  the 
most  part  no  Roman  by  lineal  descent,  but  a  Greek, 
a  Gaul,  a  Spaniard,  or  an  Illyrian.  But  the  Gaul, 
the  Spaniard,  the  Illyrian,  could  all  be  assimilated  ; 
they  could  all  be  made  into  Romans.  They  learned 


THE  NEGRO. 


to  speak  and  act  in  everything  as  men  no  less  truly 
Roman  than  the  descendants  of  the  first  settlers  on 
the  Palatine.     Such  men  ceased  to  be  Gauls,  Span 
iards,  or  Illyrians.     The  Greek,  representative  of  a 
richer  and  more  perfect  speech,  of  a  higher  and 
older  civilization,  could  become  for  many  purposes 
a  Roman  without  ceasing  to  be  a  Greek.     In  all 
these  cases  no  born  physical  or  intellectual  differ 
ence   parted   off  the   slave   from    his  master,   the 
stranger  from  the  citizen.     When  the  artificial  dis 
tinction  was  once  taken  away,  in  the  next  genera 
tion  at  least  all  real  distinction  was  lost.     This  can 
not  be  when  there  is  an  eternal  physical  and  intel 
lectual  difference  between  master  and  slave,  between 
citizen   and    stranger.      The    Roman    Senate   was 
crowded  with  Gauls  almost  from  the  first  moment 
of  the  conquest  of  Gaul  ;  but  for  a  native  Egyptian 
to  find  his  way  there  was  a  rare  portent  of  later 
times.     No  edict  of  Antoninus  Caracalla  could  turn 
him  into  a  Roman,  as  the  Gauls  had  been  turned 
long  before  that  edict.     The  bestowal  of  citizenship 
on  the  negro  is  one  of  those  cases  which  show  what 
law  can  do  and  what  it  cannot.     The  law  may  de 
clare  the  negro  to  be  the  equal  of  the  white  man  ; 
it  cannot  make  him  his  equal.     To  the  old  question, 
Am   I  not  a  man  and  a   brother?    I  venture   to 
answer:    No.     The   negro   may   be   a  man  and  a 


146  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

brother  in  some  secondary  sense ;  lie  is  not  a  man 
and  a  brother  in  the  same  full  sense  in  which  every 
Western  Aryan  is  a  man  and  a  brother.  He  cannot 
be  assimilated ;  the  laws  of  nature  forbid  it.  And 
it  is  surely  a  dangerous  experiment  to  have  in  any 
commonwealth  an  inferior  race,  legally  equal  to  the 
superior,  but  which  nature  keeps  down  below  the 
level  to  which  law  has  raised  it.  It  is  less  dangerous 
in  this  particular  case,  because  the  negro  is  on  the 
whole  a  peaceful  and  easily  satisfied  creature.  He 
has  no  very  lofty  ambition ;  he  is  for  the  most  part 
contented  to  imitate  the  ways  of  the  white  man  as 
far  as  he  can.  A  high-spirited  people  in  the  same 
case  would  be  a  very  dangerous  element  indeed. 
No  one  now  pleads  for  slavery ;  no  one  laments  the 
abolition  of  slavery  ;  but  did  the  abolition  of  slavery 
necessarily  imply  the  admission  of  the  emancipated 
slave  to  full  citizenship?  There  is,  I  allow,  diffi 
culty  and  danger  in  the  position  of  a  class  enjoying 
civil  but  not  political  rights,  placed  under  the  pro 
tection  of  the  law,  but  having  no  share  in  making 
the  law  or  in  choosing  its  makers.  But  surely  there 
is  still  greater  difficulty  and  danger  in  the  existence 
of  a  class  of  citizens  who  at  the  polling-booth  are 
equal  to  other  citizens,  but  who  are  not  their  equals 
anywhere  else.  We  are  told  that  education  has 
done  and  is  doing  much  for  the  younger  members 


A   CONSTITUTIONAL  POSSIBILITY.         147 

of  the  once  enslaved  race.  But  education  cannot 
wipe  out  the  eternal  distinction  that  has  been  drawn 
by  the  hand  of  nature.  No  teaching  can  turn  a 
black  man  into  a  white  one.  The  question  which, 
in  days  of  controversy,  the  North  heard  with  such 
wrath  from  the  mouth  of  the  South,  "  Would  you 
like  your  daughter  to  marry  a  nigger  ?"  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  matter.  Where  the  closest  of  human 
connexions  is,  in  any  lawful  form,  looked  on  as  im 
possible,  there  is  no  real  brotherhood,  no  real  fel 
lowship.  The  artificial  tie  of  citizenship  is  in  such 
cases  a  mockery.  One  has  heard  of  negro  senators 
and  negro  representatives ;  but  their  day  seems  to 
have  gone  by.  And  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
those  in  either  hemisphere  who  were  most  zealous 
for  the  emancipation  of  the  negro  must,  in  their 
heart  of  hearts,  feel  a  secret  shudder  at  the  thought 
that,  though  morally  impossible,  it  is  constitution 
ally  possible,  that  two  years  hence  a  black  man  may 
be  chosen  to  sit  in  the  seat  of  Washington  and  Gar- 
field. 

As  far  as  my  own  means  of  observation  went, 
though  this  is  the  kind  of  point  on  which  every 
man  does  well  to  distrust  conclusions  which  must 
necessarily  be  partial,  it  struck  me  that  the  feelings 
of  the  two  parts  of  the  country  towards  the  negro 
had  in  some  sort  changed  places.  Before  the  war 


148  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

we  always  understood  that  the  Northern  people, 
while  professing  zeal  for  the  freedom  of  the  negroes, 
shrank  from  them  personally,  but  that  the  Southern 
people,  while  anxious  to  keep  them  in  bondage,  felt 
no  such  personal  shrinking.     The  feeling  both  ways 
seems  perfectly  natural.     To  me  at  least  the  negro 
is  repulsive ;  but  I  can  understand  that  he  may  be 
otherwise  to  those  who  have  been  used  to  him  from- 
their  childhood.     On  the  other  hand,  I  can  under 
stand  that,  now  that  the  negroes  have  been  set  free 
by  the  agency  of  the  North  against  the  will  of  the 
South,  the  one  side  may  think  it  their  duty  to  make 
the  best  that  they  can  of  their  own  work,  while  the 
other  side  may  feel  a  very  natural  bitterness  towards 
those  whose  freedom  is  a  constant  memorial  of  their 
defeat.     I  certainly  heard  people  speak  of  the  negro 
in  a  different  tone  in  the  two  great  sections  of  the 
country.     In  the  North  it  struck  me  that  people 
tried  to  speak  as  well  of  the  negro  as  they  could ; 
in  Virginia  there  seemed  no  such  necessity.     But 
nowhere  has  the  negro  made  any  approach  to  real 
social  equality.     I  need  hardly  say  that  I  never  met 
a  negro  at  any  American  gentleman's  table.     I  did 
hear  of  one  gentleman— I  think  at  Washington— 
who  had  a  single  white  man  in  his  service,  the  others 
being  negroes.     But  the  white  man,  if  he  waited 
on  his  master,  was  waited  on  by  his  fellow-servants ; 


DIFFERENCES  AMONG   THE  BLACKS,      149 

he  dined  at  a  table  by  himself,  while  the  inferior 
race  served  him.  In  the  North  the  servants  are 
largely  Irish  or  other  strangers ;  in  the  Virginian 
farm-house  of  which  I  am  thinking,  all  the  servants, 
indoors  and  out,  were  black ;  what  seemed  strange 
to  English  notions,  none  of  them  slept  in  the  house. 
And  the  broad  distinction  between  the  two  races, 
as  wiping  out  distinctions  between  members  of  the 
same  race,  sometimes  leads  to  odd  consequences. 
If  a  white  workman,  for  instance,  has  to  be  em 
ployed  for  the  whole  day,  he  must  dine  at  the 
master's  table;  he  will  not  eat  and  drink  with 
coloured  people. 

Still  we  must  not  forget  that  there  are  great  dif 
ferences  among  the  so-called  coloured  people,  some 
doubtless  owing  to  their  different  fates  since  their 
forced  migration,  others  owing  to  older  differences 
in  their  first  African  homes.  Several  writers  have 
pointed  out  that,  under  the  general  head  of  negroes, 
blacks,  coloured  people,  we  jumble  together  men  of 
nations  differing  widely  in  speech,  in  original  geo 
graphical  position,  in  physical  qualities,  probably  in 
intellectual  qualities  too,  most  certainly  in  different 
degrees  of  blackness.  I  fancy  that  the  case  is  very 
much  as  if  the  tables  had  been  turned,  as  if  Africa 
had  enslaved  Europeans,  and  as  if  Greeks,  French 
men,  and  Swedes  had  been  jumbled  together  under 


150  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

the  common  name  of  "Whites.  And  though  educa 
tion  cannot  undo  the  work  of  nature,  though  it  can 
not  raise  the  lower  race  to  the  level  of  the  upper, 
it  may  do  much  to  improve  the  lower  race  within 
its  own  range.  A  negro  in  New  England  certainly 
differs  a  good  deal  from  a  negro  in  Missouri.  For 
the  negro  in  New  England  very  likely  comes  of  a 
free  father  and  grandfather,  and  the  fact  of  a  negro 
being  free  a  generation  or  two  back  was  a  pretty 
sure  sign  of  his  belonging  to  the  more  ener 
getic  class  of  his  fellows.  Such  an  one  has  lived 
with  white  men,  not  indeed  on  equal  terms,  but  on 
terms  which  have  enabled  him  to  master  their  lan 
guage  and  a  good  deal  of  their  manners.  But  the 
negro  in  Missouri  has  very  likely  been  himself  a 
slave,  perhaps  a  plantation  slave.  To  the  stranger 
at  least  the  speech  of  such  negroes  is  hard  to  be 
understood.  As  far  as  I  heard  it,  it  was  not  the 
racy  dialect  of  Uncle  Remus.  It  may  have  been 
my  fancy,  but  it  certainly  struck  my  ear  as  the 
speech,  not  of  foreigners  who  found  it  hard  to 
speak  English  but  who  might  be  eloquent  in  some 
other  tongue,  but  of  beings  to  whom  the  art  of 
speech  in  any  shape  was  not  altogether  familiar. 
No  doubt  the  real  fact  was  that  they  had,  as  was 
not  unlikely  in  their  position,  lost  their  own 
tongue  without  having  fully  found  ours.  If  a 


THE  INDIANS.  151 

small  vocabulary  is  enough  for  the  wants  of  an 
English  labourer,  one  smaller  still  must  have  been 
enough  for  the  wants  of  a  plantation  negro.  The 
African  languages  have,  I  believe,  altogether  died 
out  everywhere,  and,  from  all  that  I  could  learn, 
the  comic  and  joyous  element  of  the  negro  charac 
ter  seems  to  have  died  out  also.  This  is  an  uni 
versal  rule  everywhere.  The  freeman  never  has 
any  such  light-hearted  moments  as  the  Saturnalia 

of  the  slave. 

Of  the  true  Americans,  the  "  dark  Americans" 
of  the  hymn,  the  old  inhabitants  of  the  continent, 
I  saw  but  little.     And  what  little  I  saw  certainly 
disappointed  me.     I  saw  a  good  many  young  In 
dians  in  the  Indian  school  at  Carlisle  in  Pennsyl 
vania,     To  the  zeal,  energy,  and  benevolence  of  all 
who  are  concerned  in  the  work  there  I  must  bear 
such  witness  as  I  can.      And  I  am  told  that  the 
children   are   intelligent    and   take   kindly    to    the 
civilized  and  Christian   teaching  which  is  set  be 
fore   them.     But,   just   as   in  the  case  of  the  ne 
groes,  I  could  not  keep  down  my  doubts  whether 
mere  school-teaching  will  ever  raise  the  barbarian 
of   any  race   to   the  level  of   Aryan   Europe  and 
America.     Of  the  two  one  is  more  inclined  to  hail 
a  man  and  a  brother  in  the  Indian   than  in  the 
The  feelin     seems  instinctive.     While  no 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

one  willingly  owns  to  the  faintest  shade  of  negro 
descent,  every  one   is  proud  to  claim   Pocahontas 
as  a  remote  grandmother.     Such  Indians  as  I  saw, 
the  boys   and  girls,  youths   and   maidens,   of   the 
Carlisle  school,   were  certainly  less  ugly  than  the 
negroes.     But  then  they  lacked  the  grotesque  air 
which  often  makes  the  negro's  ugliness  less  repul 
sive.     From  my  preconceived  notions  of  Indians, 
I  had  at  least  expected  to  see  graceful  and  statu 
esque  forms,  the  outlines  perhaps  of  nymphs  and 
athletes.     But   the   Carlisle   Indians,  clothed   and, 
according   to    all  accounts,  in    their   right  minds, 
seemed  to  me,  both  in  face  and  figure,  the  dullest 
and  heaviest-looking  of   mankind.     Not  repulsive, 
like  the  negro,  from  the  mere  lines  of  the  face, 
they  were  repulsive  from  the  utter  lack  of  intel 
lectual   expression.      Besides  the  younger  folk   at 
Carlisle,  I  was  casually  shown  at  Schenectady,  in 
the  State  of  New  York,  a  man  who,  I  was  told, 
was  the  last,  not  of  the  Mohicans,  but  of  the  Mo 
hawks.     He  was  outwardly  civilized,  so  much  so 
indeed  that  the  justice  of  the  State  had  more  than 
once  sent  him  to  prison.      The  mind,  or  at  least 
the  press,  of  America  was  just  then  very  full  of 
an  English  lecturer  whose  name  was  largely  pla 
carded  on   the   walls,    and  whose  photographs,    in 
various  attitudes,    were   to  be  seen  in  not  a  few 


THE  CHINESE.  153 

windows.  I  was  not  privileged  to  obtain  more 
than  a  passing  glimpse  of  either.  But  it  struck 
me  that  between  the  survival  of  an  old  type  and 
the  prophet  of  a  new  there  was  a  certain  outward 
likeness. 

During  the  time  of  my  visit  to  America  neither 
the  negro  nor  the  Indian  was  the  subject  of  any 
vexing  question.  But  the  position  of  another  class 
of  barbarians — I  must  be  allowed  to  use  the  word 
in  a  way  analogous  to  its  old  Greek  use — was  under 
the  grave  consideration  of  the  federal  legislature. 
While  I  was  in  America,  President  Arthur  vetoed, 
the  first  Chinese  bill  of  last  year ;  after  I  came  to 
England  he  passed  the  second.  Of  this  latter  bill 
I  do  not  know  the  terms;  the  President  could 
hardly  have  helped  vetoing  the  former  one,  as  its 
terms  were  surely  inconsistent  with  that  famous 
amendment  which  may  be  summed  up  in  the 
phrase  of  "  giving  everybody  everything."  Yet 
I  could  not  keep  down  a  certain  feeling  of  rejoic 
ing  over  either  bill.  I  saw  in  them  a  practical 
revolt  against  an  impossible  theory,  a  confession 
of  the  truth  that  legislation  cannot  override  natu 
ral  laws.  A  constitutional  amendment,  or  any 
other  piece  of  law-making,  may  in  theory  place  all 
races  and  colours  on  a  level ;  it  cannot  do  so  in  prac 
tice.  An  acute  American  friend  pointed  out  to 


154  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

me  the  distinctions  between  the  three  races  which 
give  rise  to  the  difficulties  that  beset  the  United 
States  in  this  matter.  The  Indian  dies  out.  The 
negro  is  very  far  from  dying  out ;  but,  if  he  can 
not  be  assimilated  by  the  white  man,  he  at  least 
imitates  him.  But  the  Chinaman  does  not  die 
out ;  he  is  not  assimilated ;  he  does  not  imitate ; 
he  is  too  fully  convinced  of  the  superiority  of  his 
own  ways  to  have  the  least  thought  of  copying 
ours.  The  Chinese,  in  short,  in  the  United  States 
belong  to  one  of  those  classes  of  settlers  who  form 
no  part  of  the  people  of  the  land,  who  contribute 
nothing,  but  who  swallow  up  a  great  deal.  Now, 
at  the  risk  of  saying  what  I  suppose  is  just  now 
the  most  unpopular  thing  in  the  whole  world,  I 
must  say  that  every  nation  has  a  right  to  get  rid 
of  strangers  who  prove  a  nuisance,  whether  they 
are  Chinese  in  America  or  Jews  in  Russia,  Servia, 
Hungary,  and  Roumania.  The  parallel  may  startle 
some ;  but  it  is  a  real  and  exact  parallel,  as  far  as 
the  objects  of  the  movement  in  each  case  are  con 
cerned.  The  only  difference,  a  very  important  dif 
ference  certainly,  between  what  has  happened  in 
Russia  and  what  has  happened  in  America  consists 
in  the  means  employed  in  the  two  cases.  What 
has  been  done  in  Russia  by  mob-violence  is  doing 
in  America  in  a  legal  way.  Now  no  one  can  jus- 


CHINESE  AND  JEWS.  155 

tify  or  excuse  mob-violence  in  any  case,  whether 
aimed  at  Chinese,  Jews,  or  any  other  class.  But 
any  one  who  knows  the  facts  will  admit  that  Rus 
sian  violence  against  Jews,  though  in  no  way  to 
be  justified  or  excused,  is  in  no  way  to  be  won 
dered  at.  And  it  is  well  to  remember  that, 
though  anti-Chinese  action  in  America  now  goes 
on  in  a  perfectly  legal  way,  yet  there  have  been 
before  now  anti-Chinese  riots  in  California,  as 
there  have  been  anti-negro  riots  in  New  York. 
One  thing  I  am  certain  of,  namely  that,  if  the 
press  of  England,  Germany,  and  other  European 
countries,  were  as  largely  in  Chinese  hands  as  it 
is  in  Jewish  hands,  we  should  have  heard  much 
more  than  we  have  heard  about  anti-Chinese  ac 
tion  in  America  and  much  less  about  anti- Jewish 
action  in  Russia.  Just  now  there  are  no  tales  of 
mob-violence  against  the  Chinamen  to  record,  yet 
it  would  be  easy  for  a  practised  Chinese  advocate 
to  make  out  a  very  telling  story  about  American 
dealings  with  Chinamen.  "Frightful  Religious 
Persecution  in  the  United  States,"  "Legislation 
worthy  of  the  darkest  times  of  the  Dark  Ages," 
would  have  made  very  attractive  headings  for  an 
article  or  a  telegram  describing  the  measure  which 
passed  Congress  last  year.  No  one  has  raised  the 
cry  of  "  religious  persecution"  in  America,  because 


156  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

there  is  no  powerful  body  anywhere  whose  interest 
it  is  to  raise  it.  But  it  would  be  just  as  much  in 
place  in  America  as  it  is  in  Kussia.  Neither  the 
Jew  nor  the  Chinaman  is  attacked  on  any  grounds 
of  theological  belief  or  unbelief,  but  simply  because 
the  people  of  the  country  look  on  his  presence  as 
a  nuisance.  But  the  Jew  has  brethren  from  one 
end  of  the  world  to  the  other,  ready  and  able  to 
give  his  real  wrongs  a  false  colouring,  ready  and 
able  to  make  the  mass  of  mankind  believe  that  he 
is,  not  only  the  victim  of  unjustifiable  outrage, 
which  he  undoubtedly  is,  but  the  victim  of  re 
ligious  persecution  in  the  strict  sense,  which  he 
certainly  is  not.  The  Chinaman  has  no  such  ad 
vantage.  His  case  therefore  has  drawn  to  itself 
very  little  notice  out  of  America,  and  neither  in  nor 
out  of  America  has  it  been,. like  the  Jewish  case, 
judged  on  an  utterly  false  issue. 

The  difference  between  the  position  of  these  ques 
tions  in  America  and  in  England  illustrates  in  an 
instructive  way  the  difference  between  a  scattered 
and  a  continuous  dominion.  The  different  classes 
of  British  subjects  are  yet  more  numerous  and  va 
ried  than  the  different  classes  of  American  citizens 
and  of  dwellers  on  American  territory  without  the 
rights  of  citizenship.  A  black  Prime  Minister,  a 


THE  NEGRO  CITIZEN.  157 

yellow  Lord  Chancellor,  of  Great  Britain  is  in  theory 
no  less  possible  than  a  black  President  of  the  United 
States.     The  real  likelihood  may  be  about  equal  on 
both  sides,  but  the  theoretical  possibility  is  forced 
on  the  mind  in  the  United  States  in  a  way  in  which 
it  is  not  in  Great  Britain.  If  a  British  subject  of  bar 
barian  race  seeks  to  take  a  share  in  the  affairs  of  the 
ruling  island,  he  must  cross  a  wider  expanse  of  sea 
than  that  which  separates  America  from  Britain  ;  he 
must  learn  a  strange  tongue,  he  must  adapt  himself 
to  strange  manners,  he  must  become  in  everything 
another  man.    »To  the   negro  citizen   in  America 
everything  is  at  least  geographically  near.     He  lives, 
it  may  be,  within  sight  of  the  Capitol  and  the  White 
House ;   his   kinsman   under  British  rule  lives  far 
away  indeed  from  the  Palace  of  Westminster.     To 
the  American  negro  the  tongue  and  the  manners  of 
the  ruling  race  are  in  no  way  strange  ;  they  have 
been,  from  his  birth  upwards,  his  own  tongue  and 
his  own  manners,  so  far  as  the  distinction  planted  by 
the  hand  of  nature  has  enabled  him  to  attain  to  them. 
It  follows  therefore  that  questions  like  those  of  the 
Indian,  the  negro,  the  Chinaman,  while  they  touch 
the  American  at  his  own  hearth,  in  no  way  touch  us 
at  our  hearth,  deeply  and  sometimes  grievously  as 
they  touch  us  in  our  colonies  and  dependencies.  The 
Irish  question  alone  is  common  to  the  two  branches 


158  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

of  the  English  people.  And  it  is  plain  that  the  Irish 
question  takes  two  different  shapes  on  the  two  sides 
of  Ocean.  The  United  States,  happily  for  them, 
are  not  bnrthened  with  the  hard  necessity  of  pro 
viding  for  the  government  of  a  land  where  it  seems 
impossible  to  do  real  justice.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  problem  of  the  "  Irish  vote"  and  its  effects  on 
home  politics,  though  of  growing  and  very  unplea 
sant  importance  in  Great  Britain,  is  certainly  not  as 
yet  of  so  great  importance  as  it  is  in  America.  The 
Irish,  as  an  element  which  can  affect  and  sometimes 
turn  an  election,  are  in  England  confined  to  parti 
cular  towns  and  districts  :  in  America  they  seem  to 
be  everywhere.  JThe  influence  which  they  obtain 
in  local  politics  is  really  amazing.  The  "  bosses,"  as 
they  are  called — a  name  of  which  one  soon  comes  to 
feel  the  meaning,  though  it  is  rather  hard  to  trans 
late  into  any  other  phrase — who  hold  so  important 
and  so  anomalous  a  place  in  the  municipal  affairs  of 
American  cities  are  largely  Irish.  On  the  whole, 
even  setting  aside  the  way  in  which  Irish  influence 
in  America  bears  on  us  at  home,  that  influence  does 
not  seem  to  be  a  healthy  one.  The  position  held  by 
the  Irish  and  the  negroes  made  me  feel  more  and 
more  strongly  the  danger  of  that  hasty  and  indis 
criminate  bestowal  of  citizenship  which  has  become 
the  practice,  and  rather  the  pride,  of  the  United 


BESTOWAL  OF  CITIZENSHIP.  159 

States.  The  ancient  and  mediaeval  commonwealths, 
aristocratic  and  democratic  alike,  erred  in  the  oppo 
site  direction.  But  one  is  sometimes  tempted  to 
donbt  whether  their  error  was  not  the  smaller  of  the 
two.  There  is  surely  something  ennobling  in  that 
kind  of  national  family  feeling,  that  cleaving  to  de 
scent  from  the  old  stock,  which  was  as  strong  at 
Athens  and  inUri  as  it  was  at  Corinth  and  at  Bern. 
And  surely  a  mean  might  be  found  between  the  ex- 
clusiveness  of  the  elder  commonwealths  and  the 
excessive  lavishness  of  the  younger.  Surely  birth 
in  the  land  might  be  taken  as  the  ordinary  standard, 
a  standard  to  be  relaxed  only  in  the  case  of  eminent 
service  to  the  commonwealth.  As  foi;  the  Irish,  it 
is  whispered  that  they  somehow  contrive  to  obtain 
citizenship  yet  more  easily  than  the  easy  terms  on 
which  the  law  gives  it.  It  is  a  characteristic  story 
how  the  Irish  immigrant  was  asked,  before  he  had 
landed,  what  side  in  politics  he  meant  to  take — how 
his  first  question  was,  "Have  you  a  Government 
here?" — how,  being  assured  that  the  United  States 
had  a  Government,  he  at  once  answered,  "  Then  set 
me  down  agin  it." 

XL 

I  must  here  say  a  word  or  two  on  ecclesiastical 
matters  in  the  United  States,  so  far  as  I  can  do  so 


160  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

without  straying  on  any  fields  of  controversy  which 
are  better  avoided.  One  coming  from  England, 
specially  one  coming  from  the  rural  parts  of  Eng 
land,  is  struck  in  many  ways  by  the  fact  that  he  is 
in  a  land  in  which  all  religious  persuasions  are  on  a 
footing  of  perfect  equality.  That  fact  strikes  him 
in  the  mere  appearance  of  the  religious  buildings. 
There  is  nothing  in  size  or  architectural  character  to 
distinguish  the  places  of  worship  of  any  particular 
religious  body.  If  there  is  any  real  exception  to 
this  rule,  it  is  to  be  found  in  one  very  modern  class 
of  buildings.  A  church  which  shows  any  near  ap 
proach  to  the  character  of  a  great  European  church 
is  pretty  sure  to  be  Roman  Catholic.  But  churches 
of  this  class  are  sure  to  be  new,  and  are  often  unfi 
nished.  Built  mainly  by  the  offerings  of  the  poor, 
no  buildings  anywhere  do  more  honour  to  those  who 
have  reared  them  ;  still  one  cannot  quite  stifle  a  feel 
ing  that  they  are  not  in  their  right  place.  The 
great  metropolitan  church  at  New  York,  the  lesser, 
but  still  stately,  building  at  New  Haven,  must,  after 
all,  rank  with  the  "  bosses"  and  the  other  signs  of  Irish 
intrusion.  They  are  not  the  genuine  growth  of  the 
soil,  like  an  Episcopal  church  in  Virginia,  a  Congre 
gational  church  in  Connecticut,  or  a  Roman  Catholic 
church  at  Baltimore  or  at  St.  Louis.  They  lack  an 
tiquity,  even  in  the  modified  sense  in  which  anti- 


CHURCHES.  161 

quity  is  to  be  understood  in  the  United  States.  For 
there  is  a  standard  of  antiquity,  even  in  the  United 
States.  It  is  wonderful  how  easily  our  standard  in 
such  matters  shifts.  As  we  count  things  ancient  in 
England  which  we  do  not  count  ancient  in  Italy,  as 
we  count  things  ancient  in  Italy  which  we  do  not 
count  ancient  in  Greece,  so  we  gradually  come  in 
America  to  see  a  kind  of  relative  antiquity  in  things 
which  in.  England  we  should  hardly  call  old,  much 
less  ancient.  Everything  older  than  the  War  of  In 
dependence,  house,  church,  or  anything  else,  has  a 
kind  of  flavour  of  age  about  it.  It  belongs  to  a  past 
state  of  things,  and  it  carries  about  it  the  air  of  be 
longing  to  a  past  state  of  things.  If  it  can  boast  of 
little  positive  beauty,  it  has  at  least  the  negative 
merit  of  being  free  from  the  worse  uglinesses  of 
modern  affectation.  A  church  of  this  kind  is  likely  to 
belong  to  one  of  those  religious  bodies  which  once 
were  dominant  in  different  States,  as  Congregational 
in  New  England,  Episcopal  in  Virginia.  But  in  the 
great  modern  cities  the  English  visitor  is  likely  to 
be  struck  with  the  long  rows  of  churches  side  by  side, 
belonging  to  various  religious  bodies,  but  with  no 
thing  about  each  to  show  that  it  belongs  to  one  re 
ligious  body  rather  than  to  another.  This  is  a  novel 
feeling  to  one  mainly  used  to  the  villages  and  old 
towns  of  England ;  but  he  may  nevertheless  have 


162  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

come  across  phenomena  of  the  same  kind  in  his  own 
island.  In  many  of  our  great  modern  towns,  say  in 
the  academic  quarter  of  Manchester, we  see  churches, 
Established  and  Non-established,  side  by  side,  with 
very  little  to  distinguish  them.  So  in  Scotland,  if 
the  Established  church  can  be  distinguished  from 
its  rivals,  it  is  not  commonly  by  its  greater  architec 
tural  splendour.  Still,  taking  England  and  America 
as  wholes,  this  outward  equality  of  the  places  of  wor 
ship  of  all  religious  bodies  is  one  of  the  things 
which  decidedly  strike  as  signs  of  the  New  World. 
Indeed  to  one  used  chiefly  to  the  older  parts  of 
England  the  indiscriminate  use  of  the  mere  words 
church  and  clergyman  has  an  unusual  sound.  But 
the  changes  in  the  use  of  those  and  kindred  words 
are  worth  noticing,  both  in  England  and  in  Ame 
rica.  Within  my  memory  the  most  familiar  names 
for  Nonconformist  places  of  worship  have  changed 
more  than  once,  just  as  the  name  "  Nonconformist" 
itself  has  displaced  u  Dissenter."  The  "  meeting 
house"  has  given  way  to  the  "chapel,"  and  the 
"  chapel "  is  fast  giving  way  to  the  "  church."  The 
"  chapel  "  has  always  struck  me  as  a  rather  meaning 
less  stage,  and  in  New  England,  where  the  same 
change  of  name  has  taken  place,  it  has  been  dis 
pensed  with.  In  the  days  when  Congregationalism 
was  the  Established  religion,  each  independent 


"CHURCH"  AND  "MEETING-HOUSE."      163 

church  met  in  its  meeting-house.  The  church  was 
not  a  building,  but  a  society  of  men ;  the  meeting 
house  was  the  place  where  the  church  met.  In 
the  like  sort,  I  have  a  vague  remembrance  of  some 
ancient  Greek  Father,  who  argued  that  the  proper 
name  for  the  building  was  not  ekklesia  but  ekJdes-i- 
asterion.  In  old  England  the  name  meeting-house 
always  had  a  slight  savour  of  scorn  about  it ;  in  New 
England  it  was  used  of  choice  as  an  honourable  name 
by  the  dominant  religious  body  of  the  country.  The 
use  of  the  word  "  church,"  if  it  has  not  come  in  since 
Disestablishment,  has  certainly  strengthened  since 
that  time,  and  I  suspect  that  its  use,  like  that  of  "  cler 
gyman,"  has  in  it  something  of  conscious  assertion  of 
equality  all  round.  As  the  Eoman  Catholic  speaks 
most  naturally  of  his  "  priest,"  the  Congregational- 
ist  or  Presbyterian  speaks  most  naturally  of  his 
"  pastor"  or  "  minister,"  and  I  venture  to  think  that 
to  the  untutored  Church  of  England  mind  no  name 
comes  so  kindly  as  the  "  parson."  But  there  is  per 
haps  about  the  "  parson"  a  certain  savour  of  tithe  and 
glebe  which  may  not  be  altogether  in  place  in  an 
unendowed  or  disendowed  body. 

To  one  who  is  old  enough  to  have  marked  for 
himself  the  great  changes  which  have  taken  place 
in  England  during  the  last  forty  or  fifty  years, 
both  in  the  Established  Church  and  among  Non- 


164  IMPBBS8IONB  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

conformist  bodies,  the  inside  of  an  American 
church,  whether  Episcopal  or  otherwise,  most  com 
monly  suggests  that  he  has  come  among  a  highly 
conservative  people.  I  do  not  say  always ;  some 
times  an  American  church  shows  devices  which 
are  altogether  modern,  but  which  are  nevertheless 
of  a  kind  which  certainly  calls  for  our  admi 
ration.  I  lectured  in  the  Baptist  church  at 
Brooklyn.  The  building,  to  my  mediaeval  eye, 
seemed  more  like  an  amphitheatre  than  a  church ; 
but  in  one  point  the  architect  had  done  his  work 
to  perfection.  I  never  spoke  in  any  building 
where  it  was  so  easy  to  speak,  and  I  imagine  that 
it  was  equally  easy  to  hear.  And  this  fact  may 
suggest  a  practical  lesson.  If  a  church  is  to  be 
simply  a  preaching-house,  it  is  surely  wiser  to  grap 
ple  with  the  fact,  and  to  make  a  building  which 
thoroughly  answers  its  purpose  as  a  preaching- 
house.  It  is  well,  in  such  a  case,  to  cast  away  all 
traditions,  Greek,  Eoman,  Anglican,  or  Lutheran, 
which  look  on  the  church  as  something  other 
than  a  preaching-house.  I  lectured  in  some  other 
churches  which  did  not  answer  their  purpose  so 
wTell  as  the  Brooklyn  Baptist  church,  while  they 
had  so  much  the  general  air  of  a  Eoman,  Anglican, 
or  Lutheran  church  as  to  make  one  miss  the  altar  at 
the  east  end.  This,  I  need  not  say  I  did  not  miss 


ARRANGEMENTS  OF  CHURCHES.          165 

at  Brooklyn  ;  there  was  nothing  to  suggest  it.  But 
this  is  not  exactly  what  I  meant  when  I  spoke  of 
conservatism  in  American  churches.  In  several 
fashionable  Episcopal  churches  I  felt  carried  back 
to  the  days  of  my  boyhood.  All  that  we  here 
rather  pride  ourselves  on  having  got  rid  of  since 
those  days  was  there,  flourishing  yet  more  proudly 
than  it  flourished  in  England  fifty  years  back. 
One  sees  a  whole  church  filled  with  pews  good 
lier  than  any  that  could  be  seen  in  England 
even  in  that  day,  unless  it  were  some  gorgeous 
squire's  closet  which  made  the  wretchedness  of 
the  rest  of  the  building  look  more  wretched  still. 
American  pews  are  velveted,  chaired,  stored  with 
fans,  provided  with  "  all  the  comforts  and  con 
veniences  as  well  as  the  necessaries  of  life." 
Above  them  soars  the  gallery,  with  its  hired  sing 
ers  of  both  sexes,  flaunting  in  the  face  of  the 
congregation,  just  as  they  might  be  seen  in  an 
English  town  church  fifty  years  back.  At  New 
port  in  Rhode  Island  is  a  church,  ancient  according 
to  the  American  standard,  both  in  its  fabric  and 
in  its  fittings,  and  which  is  looked  on  with  deep 
reverence  because  the  organ  was  given  by  Bishop 
Berkeley.  Things  here  differ  a  good  deal  from  the 
fashionable  splendours  of  New  York ;  but  they  are 
quite  as  unlike  anything  that  one  has  got  used  to 


ICG  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

in  England  during  the  last  half-century.  The 
pews  seemed  to  be  devised  so  as  to  cause  every 
devotional  act  to  be  done  under  the  greatest  possi 
ble  amount  of  difficulty.  It  was  hard  to  listen,  to 
worship,  or  even  to  sleep.  Yet,  after  fourteen 
months,  I  remembered  the  sermon,  as  an  instance 
of  thoroughly  good  feeling  thrown  into  a  rather 
grotesque  shape.  The  preacher  told  us  his  name 
and  address  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina ;  he  told 
his  New  England  hearers  how  glad  he  would  be  to 
see  any  of  them  at  his  southern  home,  and  he  as 
sured  them  that  Garfield  was  as  much  lamented  in 
South  Carolina  as  he  could  be  in  Ehode  Island. 
Such  a  church  as  this  is  a  puzzle.  The  conserva 
tive  American  wishes  to  keep  every  pew  as  it  is,  on 
the  ground  of  reverence  for  antiquity.  The  inno 
vating  Britisher,  to  whom  the  American's  antiquity 
is  newness,  feels  inclined  to  get  rid  of  them  on 
half-a-dozen  grounds.  In  fact,  in  such  a  position  as 
this,  these  ugly  eighteenth-century  boxes  wake  up 
the  same  kind  of  conflict  and  argument  as  those 
screens  in  some  of  our  great  churches  which  we 
feel  would  on  every  practical  ground  be  better 
away,  but  against  which  we  cannot  bring  ourselves 
to  say  a  word  because  of  their  antiquity  and  beauty. 
In  all  these  matters  the  elder  country  has  cer 
tainly  been  the  more  go-ahead  of  the  two.  May  I 


THE  AMERICAN  PRATER-BOOK  1G7 

niention  another  instance  of  American  ecclesiastical 
conservatism,  where  I  must  be  allowed  to  think 
that  British  innovation  has  the  advantage?  I  mean 
the  custom,  which  I  noticed  both  in  Episcopal  and 
other  churches,  of  beginning  to  talk  the  moment 
the  service  is  over.  In  England  we  commonly  wait 
till  we  are  out  of  the  church.  But  the  American 
use  is  really  a  survival,  a  comparatively  harmless 
survival,  of  the  practice  of  talking  while  the  service 
is  going  on.  A  long  catena  in  favour  of  that  prac 
tice  might  be  put  together,  stretching  from  the 
days  of  Edward  the  Confessor  to  those  of  George 
the  Third.  Both  in  Britain  and  in  America  we 
have  improved  since  the  days  when  Henry  the 
Second  scribbled  and  looked  at  pictures  all  the  time 
of  mass,  since  the  days  when  Pepys  and  "the  two 
Sir  Williams"  had  "  much  talk"  in  the  pew.  Still 
I  must  think  that  Britain  may  claim  the  higher 
praise,  as  having  fallen  away  yet  further  from  the 
customs  of  those  days  than  America  has. 

But  the  most  amazing  mixture  of  reckless  inno 
vation   with   something  more   than   conservatism, 

O  / 

with  deliberate  falling  back  on  the  models  of  the 
earliest  time,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  Prayer-book  of  the 
American  Episcopal  Church.  Every  time  I  have 
listened  to  it  or  looked  at  it,  I  have  been  more  and 
more  amazed  at  the  union  of  the  two  discordant 


168   IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

elements.  It  is  easy  to  see  historically  from  what 
quarters  they  severally  came,  but  that  makes  it  none 
the  less  wonderful  that  the  same  assembly  of  men, 
intrusted  with  the  revision  and  alteration  of  a  docu 
ment,  should  have  altered  it  in  tw.o  opposite  direc 
tions.  The  changes  in  the  Morning  and  Evening 
Prayer  and  the  changes  in  the  Liturgy  would  seem  to 
have  been  done  by  men  ages  or  hemispheres  apart. 
The  one  is  mutilated  and  confused;  the  other 
is  restored  to  primitive  perfection.  In  the  one, 
the  object  seems  to  have  been  carefully  to  destroy 
the  order  and  harmony  of  the  English  book,  and,  at 
whatever  cost,  to  turn  good  English  into  bad.  In 
the  other,  the  result  has  been  to  bring  those  frag 
ments  of  antiquity  which  are  all  that  either  Witten 
berg  or  Canterbury  or  Rome  has  kept  back  again  to 
the  full  measure  and  beauty  of  earlier  models.  In 
the  lesser  office  some  needless  and  barbarous  depar 
ture  from  a  venerable  pattern  grates  every  moment 
on  the  ear.  In  the  greater  we  feel  carried  into  a 
distant  and  an  elder  world ;  by  the  banks  of  the 
Hudson  and  the  Potomac  we  seem  carried  away  to 
the  Bosporos  and  the  Dnieper ;  we  feel  how  truly 
the  far  West  has  fallen  back  upon  the  teaching  of 
the  changeless  East,  when,  in  the  newborn  city  or 
in  the  half-reclaimed  wilderness,  we  seem  to  join 
with  John  Chrysostom,  with  Photios,  and  with 


EXTEMPORE  PRATER. 

Nikon,  in  a  rite  which  would  not  be  out  of  place 
beneath  the  cupolas  of  Constantinople  or  of  Kief. 
In  the  American  Church  every  one  accepts,  no  one 
quarrels  with,  a  formula  which  I  can  well  believe 
that  British  ignorance  would  call  "  Popish,"  because 
it  is  of  a  truth  the  most  speaking  protest  against 
the  Pope  and  all  his  works.  We  know,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  that  the  disfigurement  of  the  Morning  and 
Evening  Prayer,  alike  in  matter  and  in  language, 
simply  represents  the  taste  and  feeling  of  the  latter 
part  of  the  last  century,  while  the  restoration  of  the 
ancient  Communion-service  was  due  to  Bishop  Sea- 
bury's  dealings  with  the  Scottish  Episcopal  Church. 
But  this  does  not  make  it  any  the  less  wonderful 
that  men  who  could  devise  or  put  up  with  the 
changes  in  one  way  could  welcome  other  changes  of 
a  kind  so  opposite. 

"With  other  forms  of  religious  worship  I  was  less 
at  home.  I  must  confess  that  I  generally  find 
extempore  prayer  unpleasant.  It  is  commonly 
accompanied  by  the  lack  of  all  sacerdotal  preten 
sions  ;  yet  it  always  has  to  me  a  certain  savour  of 
priestcraft.  In  an  Anglican,  a  Koman,  an  Ortho 
dox,  church,  if  I  only  understand  enough  of  the 
service  to  follow  it,  I  am  something.  I  am  part  of 
a  body  whose  doings  are  regulated  by  law,  and  not 
by  the  arbitrary  will  of  a  particular  man.  In  a 


170  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Presbyterian  or  Congregational  church  I  am  a  dumb 
dog ;  I  am  at  the  mercy  of  another  man,  who  can 
put  up  what  prayers  he  chooses  in  my  name,  with 
out  my  having  any  part  or  lot  in  the  matter.     At 
the  same  time  I  cannot  but  see  the  occasional  ad 
vantages  of  a  more  flexible  kind  of  worship.     It  is 
indeed  easy  to  find  a  psalrn  to  suit  any  occasion  of 
life,  public  or  private ;  but  one  can  do  so  only  with 
a  certain  feeling  that  we  are  perverting  the  mean 
ing  of  the  psalmist.     I  confessed  myself  half  con 
verted  to  extempore  prayer  when  a  minister  prayed 
very  intelligibly  for  the  patriots  of  Crivoscia,  and  I 
could  not  but  admire  the  discretion  of  a  college 
chaplain  who  not  only  returned  thanks   for  past 
benefactors  but  prayed  for  new   ones.     I  was  of 
course  not  surprised  to  find  the  ecclesiastical  phra 
seology  of  some   of  the  American  religious  bodies 
differing  a  good  deal  from  anything  to  which  I  was 
used;  but  an  "  adult  gents'    bible-class,"  which  I 
saw  announced  on  the  door  of  a  very  respectable 
church  in  a  city  of  which  my  memories  are  the 
pleasantest,  was   something  for   which   I   was  not 
prepared. 

I  am  thus  far  speaking  of  sober  and  reasonable 
worship  among  men  of  our  own  race  and  colour. 
But  in  some  parts  of  my  journey  I  was  able  to  get 
glimpses  of  something  different.  A  camp-meeting 


NEGRO   CHURCHES. 

I  did  not  see ;  but  I  did  see  one  kind  of  worship 
which  seemed   to  me  passing  strange.     In  my  so 
journ  in  rural  Virginia  I  had  the  opportunity  of 
seeing  some  illustrations  of  the  law  by  which  religion 
so   largely  follows  race.     As   there   is  a   Greek,  a 
Latin,  and  a  Teutonic  Christianity,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  Churches  of  the  further  East,  so  the  black 
man  has  developed  something  for  himself  which  is 
surely  neither  Greek,  Latin,  nor  Teutonic.     In  the 
neighbourhood  where  I  was  staying,  there  was  an 
Episcopal  and  a  Presbyterian  church,  neither  of  them 
great  works  of  architecture,  but  respectable  build 
ings  according  to  rural  American  notions.    Between 
these  more  sober  places  of  worship  the  white  popu 
lation  was  divided ;  and  there  was  a  pleasing  sim 
plicity  in  the    sight   of   carriages   and   horses  left 
freely  about  while  their  owners  attended  the  ser 
vice.     But  the  negroes  had   places  of  worship  of 
their   own,  Methodist   and   Baptist,   not    "steeple- 
houses"   like  those  of  their  white  neighbours,  but 
huts  hardly   to  be  distinguished  from  their  own 
cabins.     I  did  not  make  my  way  into  any  of  them  ; 
the  undertaking  seemed  somewhat  wild  and  peril 
ous;    but    at    Baltimore    I    attended    two    negro 
churches  of  quite  opposite  persuasions.     One  was 
Methodist,  a  building  of  some  size,  closely  packed 
with  a  zealous  congregation.     I  could  have  wished 


172  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

that  the  congregation  had  been  less  zealous  or  less 
closely-packed ;  for  I  should  have  greatly  liked  to 
stay  to  the  end,  which  I  found  it  utterly  impossible 
to  do  on  purely  physical  grounds.  The  praying, 
singing,  preaching,  was  all  of  a  kind  which  sounded 
very  strange  to  me ;  but  at  least  nothing  could  be 
more  hearty.  The  sermon  treated  largely  of  Herod 
the  Great ;  I  trust  I  do  not  misrepresent  the 
preacher  when  I  say  that,  according  to  the  memory 
of  more  than  one  hearer,  he  told  us  that  the  will  of 
that  prince  was  "  taken  to  Koine  to  be  probated  by 
Augustus" — some  thought  he  said  by  "  a  justice"- 
"  before  the  Sanhedrim."  From  this  scene  I  turned 
to  another,  which  I  understood  better,  a  negro 
Episcopal  church,  with  tendencies  to  what  is  called 
an  "  advanced  ritual."  It  was  but  a  little  flock  that 
was  gathered  together ;  but  the  few  that  there  were 
seemed  just  as  zealous  as  their  Methodist  neigh 
bours.  And  I  thought  I  could  understand  that 
these  two  seemingly  opposite  kinds  of  worship 
might  easily  commend  themselves  to  the  same  class 
of  minds.  In  both  there  is  a  greater  opportunity 
of  joining  "  lustily  and  with  a  good  courage"  than 
there  is  in  some  intermediate  kinds  of  devotion. 

There  are  however  some  black  religionists  who 
seem  quite  able  to  give  a  reason  for  the  hope  that  is 
in  them,  but  who  would  certainly  not  approve  of 


THE  FASHIONABLE  CHURCH.  173 

the  small  Episcopal  flock  and  hardly  of  the  larger 
Methodist  body.  I  read  in  an  American  novel  a 
neoro  theological  poem,  which  seemed  to  be  genu 
ine,  and  which  discussed  the  merits  of  various  re 
ligious  persuasions.  I  was  sorry  to  find  near  the 
beginning  the  lines — 

Tiscopalians  dey  won't  do; 

Dey  fiddle  and  dance  de  whole  night  froo. 

I  do  not  remember  the  exact  words  of  the  rest ; 
but  Presbyterians  would  not  do  either,  nor  yet 
Congregationalists,  nor  indeed  any  sect  except  the 
Baptists,  who  were  exactly  the  right  thing.  But  I 
am  afraid  that  in  the  verses  that  I  quoted  the  negro 
satirist  hit  upon  a  truth.  In  several  of  the  great 
cities— not  in  all— the  Episcopal  Church  is  very 
distinctly  the  fashionable  Church.  I  could  wish 
it  were  otherwise.  I  should  think  that  to  be  a 
merely  fashionable  Church  was  the  very  worst 
thing  that  could  happen  to  any  religious  body. 
Better  surely  even  to  "  die  of  dignity,"  as  the 
Church  of  England  was  said  to  be  doing  at  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century.  One  sign  of 
tliis  unlucky  position  may  be  seen  in  the  constant 
reference  to  an  ecclesiastical  season  of  which  in 
England  we  hear  much  less.  One  whose  creed 
certainly  did  not  commit  him  to  its  observance 


174  IMP8E88ZO2f8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

warned  a  friend  who  was  coming  from  England 
that  he  would  hear  the  word  "Lent"  oftener  at 
Baltimore  than  he  had  ever  heard  it  in  his  life  be 
fore.  And  he  might  have  said  the  same  of  New 
York  and  Philadelphia.  The  penitential  season 
certainly  does  make  its  mark  in  America  in  a  way 
which  we  do  not  see  in  England.  It  does  make  a 
distinct  break  in  that  wonderful  round  of  gaieties 
in  which  the  great  American  cities  seem  to  delight. 
One  cause  indeed  may  be,  as  was  suggested  to  me, 
that  the  fashionable  seasons  of  England  and 
America  are  different.  The  rank  and  fashion  of 
the  older  country  does  not  shut  itself  up  in  a  town 
till  the  country  is  putting  forth  its  full  beauties, 
that  is,  till  Lent  is  over.  America  keeps  different 
times,  times  which,  if  people  are  to  be  shut  up  in 
a  town  at  all,  are  surely  more  seasonable,  and  times 
which  Lent  more  distinctly  breaks  in  upon. 

But  the  existence  of  a  fashionable  Church, 
whether  Episcopal  or  otherwise,  in  no  way  hinders 
the  general  equality  of  all  religious  bodies.  The 
general  good  feeling  about  such  matters  strikes  the 
visitor,  and  strikes  him  pleasantly,  at  every  turn. 
If  people  in  America  despise  or  quarrel  with  one 
another  about  religious  differences,  they  contrive 
to  do  it  privately,  and  not  to  let  the  stranger  see. 
It  is  a  little  odd  to  hear  a  bishop  addressed  by  a 


THE  CLERGY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION.      175 

Quaker  as    "  Friend  A. ;"  but  it  may  well  be  tlio 
better  for  both  bishop  and  Quaker.     But  I  may 
notice  one  thing  which  I  heard  from  an  eminent 
Congregational  minister,  who,  after  a  sojourn  in  the 
United  States,  was  going   back  to   England.     He 
complained  that  the  clergy  of  all  religious  bodies 
in  America  were  more  closely  confined  by  public 
opinion  to  their  strictly  religious  duties  than  they 
are  in  England,  either  in  the  Established  Church 
or  among  Nonconformists.     He  gave  a  curious  and 
amusing  instance.    Soon  after  he  settled  in  America, 
he  was  invited  to  attend  a  public  meeting.     He 
naturally  thought  that  he  would  be  asked  to  make 
a   speech,  to   propose  or  second  some   resolution. 
But  no ;  all  that  fell  to  his  lot  was  to  share  with 
another  minister  the  duty  of  saying  a  kind  of  grace 
before  and  after  meat,  while  the  real  work  of  the 
meeting  was   assigned  to  laymen  only.      And   in 
other   things  he  complained — and  his  complaints, 
like  all  other  things,  got  into  the  New  York  papers 

that  he  was   cabined,   cribbed,   confined,   in   his 

sphere  of  action  in  New  York  in  a  way  in  which 
he  was  not  in  London.  He  was  expected  to  mind 
his  own  business  in  a  way  to  which  he  was  not 
used  in  England.  Yet  the  position  of  a  popular 
preacher  in  an  American  city  certainly  seems  to  be 
both  an  influential  and  a  profitable  one.  and  my 


176  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Congregationalist  friend  was  perhaps  not  worse  off 
than  English  bishops  of  ordinary  sees  are  said  to  be 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  if  they  ever  venture  to  obey 
the  Queen's  summons,  and  to  take  their  part  in  the 
general  affairs  of  the  realm. 

I  need  hardly  tell  any  one  that  there  is  not 
now,  in  any  State  of  the  Union,  what  is  commonly 
understood  by  an  Established  Church.  How  an. 
Established  Church  is  to  be  denned  is  perhaps 
less  easy  to  rule  than  many  people  think.  And  I 
sometimes  gratified  my  love  of  paradox  by  saying 
that  in  the  United  States  it  would  be  truer  to  say 
that  there  are  many  Established  Churches  than 
to  say  that  there  is  none.  That  is  to  say,  though 

«/  v  *  O 

no  religious  body  is  in  any  way  dominant,  in  any 
way  favoured  by  the  State,  yet  any  religious  congre 
gation  can  easily  obtain  legal  incorporation,  and 
a  position  which  may  really  be  called  State  estab 
lishment,  though  assuredly  without  endowment. 
When  I  sny  without  endowment,  I  mean  of  course 
without  endowment  granted  by  the  State;  for 
endowments  of  other  kinds  the  State  protects. 
Some  people  seem  to  think — perhaps  they  would 
not  say  so  in  so  many  words,  but  practically  they 
think — that  by  disestablishment  and  endowment  a 
religious  body  will  wholly  escape  from  State  control. 
The  records  of  American  law  courts  would  soon 


CHURCH  AND  STATE.  177 

undeceive  them.  There  are  in  truth  two  quite  dis 
tinct  forms  of  interference  in  ecclesiastical  matters 
on  the  part  of  the  State.  There  is  the  personal 
supremacy  of  the  Sovereign,  as  acknowledged  by 
the  Established  Church  of  England,  and  exercised 
at  present  by  the  Queen  in  Council.  This  is  the 
supremacy  of  the  Sovereign  as  Supreme  Governor 
of  the  Church,  and  it  is  equally  the  supremacy  of 
the  Sovereign,  whether  those  who  act  as  the  So 
vereign's  advisers  in  its  exercise  are  lawyers,  or 
bishops,  or  anything  else.  To  this  supremacy  of 
course  there  is  nothing  answering  in  the  United 
States.  But  besides  this  there  is  the  general  supre 
macy  of  the  law,  exercised  by  the  ordinary  courts 
of  law ;  and  this  supremacy  must  be  exercised  in 
some  shape  in  any  country  where  there  is  any  law 
at  all.  From  this  supremacy  no  person  or  society, 
secular  or  spiritual,  established  or  disestablished, 
can  escape.  And  this  supremacy  is  constantly 
exercised  in  ecclesiastical  matters  by  the  American 
courts.  Almost  any  question  of  doctrine  or  disci 
pline  in  any  religious  body  may  come  before  a 
temporal  court,  because  every  such  question  may 
involve  a  question  of  contract.  Take  such  a  case 
as  this,  the  proceedings  in  which  I  read  while  in 
America.  A  Eoman  Catholic  priest  was  dismissed 
from  his  cure  by  his  bishop.  Such  dismissal  of 


178  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

course  touches  both  his  reputation  and  his  pocket, 
and,  if  done  wrongfully,  it  is  a  civil  damage. 
Whether  it  is  done  wrongfully  or  not  depends  on 
the  question  whether  it  is  done  according  to  the 
regulations  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  which 
both  bishop  and  priest  have  contracted  to  observe, 
and  which,  as  a  matter  of  contract,  the  temporal  law 
will  enforce  against  both  of  them.  What  the  regu 
lations  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  on  any 
matter  are  becomes  a  matter  of  evidence.  In  the 
case  of  which  I  speak  the  settlement  of  this  point 
involved  a  disputation  in  canon  law  which  might 
have  called  forth  the  learning  of  all  Doctors'  Com 
mons  when  Doctors'  Commons  still  was.  To  enable 
the  Court  to  decide  whether  the  Bishop's  act  was 
regular  or  not,  the  counsel  on  each  side  quoted 
endless  canons  of  endless  councils,  from  the  oecu 
menical  assemblies  of  the  early  Church  down  to  the 
decrees  of  a  provincial  synod  held  a  few  years 
before  in  their  own  State.  Proceedings  exactly 
the  same  in  principle  may  happen  in  the  case  of 
any  other  religious  body ;  only  there  is  something 
specially  curious  when  one  finds  the  temporal  court 
of  an  American  State  listening  patiently  to  argu 
ments  founded  on  the  decrees  of  councils  held  ages 
back  at  Trent  or  Lyons  or  Rome.  This  kind  of 
jurisdiction,  though  exercised  under  different  forms, 


ECCLESIASTICAL   CAUSES.  179 

is  essentially  the  same  as  that  which  is  exercised 
when  the  King's  Bench — or  whatever  now  answers 
to  the  King's  Bench — sends  a  mandamus  to  any 
ecclesiastical  judge,  ordinary,  or  visitor.  It  is  a 
jurisdiction  which  must,  in  some  shape,  exist  in  all 
times  and  places ;  it  is  a  jurisdiction  which  the 
pagan  Emperor  Aurelian  exercised  between  two 
claimants  for  the  possession  of  a  Christian  church. 
It  is  a  jurisdiction  which  in  our  own  country  affects 
Nonconformist  bodies  just  as  much — though  by  a 
somewhat  different  procedure — as  it  affects  the 
Established  Church.  It  flourishes  in  full  strength 
on  American  soil,  and  it  there  produces  a  class  of 
cases  which  for  me,  at  the  time  of  my  visit,  had  a 
special  interest.  The  supremacy  of  the  Crown  has 
gone,  and  has  left  no  representative  ;  the  supremacy 
of  the  law  is  as  strong  there  as  ever. 

XII. 

The  Universities  and  Colleges  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  general  position  of  the  country  with 
regard  to  learning,  formed  a  subject  which  naturally 
attracted  a  good  deal  of  my  thoughts.  I  was  thrown 
more  among  members  of  the  American  colleges 
than  among  any  other  class  of  people,  and  certainly 
from  no  class  of  people  have  I  ever  received  more 


180  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

kindness  than  from  some  of  their  presidents  and 
professors.     One  of  the  first  things  that  strike  the 
stranger  is  the  amazing  number  of  universities  and 
colleges.     It  is  said  that  in  the  one  State  of  Ohio 
there  are  thirty-two  institutions  that  grant  degrees. 
We  can  hardly  be  wrong  in  inferring  that  the  de 
grees  granted  by  some  of  these  institutions  cannot 
be  worth  very  much ;  it  is  quite  certain  that  some 
of  them  are  institutions  of  quite  another  kind  from 
acknowledged  seats  of  learning  like  Harvard  and 
Yale.     And  perhaps  we  should  not  be  wrong  if  we 
were  to  infer  that  it  would  be  a  gain  if  some  of 
these  degree-giving  bodies  were  abolished  or  merged 
in  others.     We  are  sometimes  amused  at  home  at 
the  ease  and  coolness  with  which  any  new-made 
school,  without  the   least  shadow  of   a   collegiate 
foundation,  dubs  itself  a  "  college."     We  are  more 
seriously  provoked  when    an    ancient    foundation 
which  has  lived  on  for  ages  under  the  honourable 
name  of  "  grammar  school"  thinks  it  fine  to  deck 
itself  out  with  the  silly  title  of  "  college"  or  "  college 
school."     But  these  "  colleges"  at  least  do  not  call 
themselves  Universities;    they  do   not   profess   to 
grant  degrees.     It  is  allowed  that  for  the  exercise 
of  this  last  power  a  royal  charter  must  be  had. 
Now  my  feelings  make  me  most  loath  to  say  a  word 
in  any  federal  country  against  the  powers  of  the 


COLLEGES.  181 

several  States ;  but  it  is  surely  not  unreasonable  to 
hint  that  the  right  of  granting  degrees  should  be 
assumed  only  by  authority  of  the  federal  power. 
For  a  degree  is  surely  a  national  thing,  or  rather  it 
is  something  more  than  a  national  thing.     It  ought 
t0  be — I  do  not  say  whether  it  anywhere  is — some 
thing  like   knighthood    in   old  times,  a  badge  of 
scholarship  which  should  enable  a  man  to  take  his 
place  among  scholars  in  any  land  to  which  he  may 
come.      On  the  other  hand,  the  smaller  and  less 
distinguished   American   colleges   are   not   a  mere 
unmixed  evil.     If  they  largely  hindered  men  from 
going   to   the   better  colleges,  then  they  certainly 
would  be  so.     But  from  all    I  could  gather,  the 
choice  commonly  was,  not  whether  a  lad  should  go 
to  Harvard  or  Yale  or  to  an  inferior  college,  but 
whether  he  should  go  to  the  inferior   college   or 
should  get  no  education  at  all.     In  this  latter  case 
it  is  to  be  supposed  that  some  little  knowledge,  some 
little  culture,  is  gained,  which  may  at  any  rate  be 
better  than  none  at  all.     And  I  can  say  from  my 
own  knowledge  that  there  are  American  colleges  of 
much   less   reputation   than   the  great  ones  where 
there  certainly  are  good  teachers,  and  therefore,  I 
presume,  good  teaching.     The  course  of  my  journey 
led  me  to  a  good  many  of  them;   and  everywhere  I 
found  some  one,  or  more  than  one,  whom  I  was 


182  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

glad  to  meet   and   should   be   sorry  not   to   meet 
again. 

Looking  at  the  colleges  at  the  whole,  or  rather 
at  what  may  be  supposed  to  be  the  effect  of  their 
teaching  on  the  general  cultivation  of  the  country, 
the  fault  or  danger  seemed  to  me  to  lie  in  a  certain 
I  tendency  to   mediocrity,  a  tendency  not  to  go  to 
the  roots  of  things.     I  speak  only  by  comparison. 
Such    tendencies    are    certainly    familiar    enough 
everywhere;    they  certainly  cannot  be    called    an 
American  peculiarity ;  it  may  be  going  too  far  to 
call  them  even  an  American  characteristic.      For 
the   state   of  mind   of  which  I   speak,  though   it 
was  brought  forcibly  to  my  notice  on  the  other 
side   of  Ocean,  is   only  too  common   in   England 
also,  and  in  many  parts  beside.     I  remember  years 
ago   acting  as   Examiner  at    Oxford  with   a  man 
who,  whatever  may  have  been  his  attainments  as 
a    lawyer,   had    certainly   made    a  good    deal    of 
money  at  the  bar.     He  made  the  men  who  were  ex 
amined   say  that    the   Conqueror    introduced   the 
feudal  system  at  the  Great  Council  of  Salisbury. 
I  implored  him  to  say  nothing  of  the  kind,  and  ex 
plained  to  him  that  the  legislation  of  Salisbury  was 
the  exact  opposite  to  what  he  fancied.     My  col 
league  refused  to  hearken;  he  had  to  examine  in 
law ;  Blackstone  was  the  great  oracle  of  the  law  • 


ORIGINAL  AUTHORITIES.  183 

Blackstone  put   the  matter   as   lie   put  it,   and  he 
could  not  go   beyond  Blackstone.     This  is   an  ex 
treme  case  of  a  man  who  cannot   get  beyond   his 
modern  book,  and  to  whom  the  notion  of  an  origi 
nal  authority  is  something  which  never  came  into 
his  head.    I  can  speak  only  of  my  own  subjects,  but  I 
should  suppose  that  some  analogous  state  of  things  is 
to  be  found  in  other  branches  of  knowledge.    At  any 
rate  there  is  in  all  parts  of  the  world  a  large  class  of 
people  into  whose  heads  it  never  does  come  that  his 
tory  is  written  from  original  sources.     I  have  had 
talks  with  people,  and  have  received  letters  from 
people,  who  clearly  thought  that  I  or  any  other  writer 
of  history  did  it  all  from  some  kind  of  intuition  or 
revelation,  who  had  no  idea  that  we  got  our  know 
ledge  by  turning  over  this  book  and  that.     And  I 
have  known  others  who  have  got  beyond  this  stage, 
who  know  that  we  get  our -^knowledge  from  earlier 
writings,  but  who  fancy  that  these  earlier  writings  are 
something  altogether  strange  and  rare,  the  exclusive 
possession  of  a  certain  class,  and  placed  altogether 
out  of  the  reach  of  any  but  members  of  that  class. 
They  are  amazed  if  you  tell  them  that  for  large  parts 
of  history,  for  all  those  parts  at  any  rate  with  which 
I  am  mainly  concerned,  the  sources  lie  open  to  every 
man,  and  that  the  only  advantage  which  the  pro 
fessed  historian  has  is  the  greater  skill  which  long 


184  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

practice  may  be  supposed  to  have  given  him  in  the 
art  of  using  the  sources.  Now  this  state  of  mind, 
one  which  practically  does  not  know  that  there  are 
any  sources,  common  enough  in  England,  is  com 
moner  still  in  America.  There,  if  we  except  a 
small  body  of  scholars  of  the  first  rank,  original 
sources  seem  to  be  practically  unknown.  It  struck 
me  that,  with  regard  to  reading  and  knowledge — at 
least  in  those  branches  of  which  I  can  judge — 
America  stands  to  England  very  much  as  England 
stands  to  Germany.  I  conceive  that  in  Germany 
the  proportion  of  those  who  know  something  is 
smaller  than  it  is  in  England,  while  the  proportion 
of  those  who  know  a  great  deal  is  certainly  larger. 
Anyhow  this  distinction  is  perfectly  true  between 
England  and  America.  There  is  a  mysterious  being 
called  the  "  general  reader,"  of  whom  some  editors 
seem  to  live  in  deadly  fear.  Now  I  had  long  sus 
pected  that  the  "  general  reader"  was  not  so  great 
a  fool  as  the  editors  seemed  to  think,  and  my 
American  experience  has  confirmed  that  suspicion. 
America  strikes  me  as  the  land  of  the  "  general 
reader ;"  and,  if  so,  I  am  not  at  all  disposed  to  think 
scorn  of  the  "  general  reader."  It  seemed  to  me 
that  in  America  the  reading  class,  the  class  of 
those  who  read  widely,  who  read,  as  far  as  they 
gOj  intelligently,  but  who  do  not  read  deeply — the 


"THE  GENERAL  READER."  185 

class  of  those  who,  without  being  professed  scholars, 
read  enough  and  know  enough  to  be  quite  worth  talk 
ing  to— form   a  larger   proportion  of   mankind   in 
America  than  they  do  ia  England.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  class  of  those  who  read  really  deeply,  the  class  of 
professed  scholars,  is  certainly  much  smaller  in  pro 
portion  in  America  than  it  is  in  England.     The  class 
exists ;  it  numbers  some  who  have  done  thoroughly 
good  work,  and  others  from  whom  thoroughly  good 
work  may  be  looked  for  ;  but  it  sometimes  fails  to 
show  itself  where  one  might  most  have  expected  to 
find  it.    Men  from  whose  position  one  might  have  ex 
pected  something  more  seern  hardly  to  have  grasped 
the  conception  of  an  original  authority.    One  sees  col 
lege  library  after  college  library  which  does  not  con 
tain   a  volume   of  the    Chronicles  and  Memorials, 
where  the  existence  of  that  great  series  seems  to  be 
unknown.     I  met  men  who  admired  Dr.  Stubbs  as 
they  ought  to  do,  who  had  read  his  Constitutional 
History  carefully,  but  who  had  never  so  much  as 
heard   of   those   wonderful   prefaces,    those   living 
pictures  of  men   and  times,  on  which,  even  more 
than  on  the  Constitutional  History,  the  fame  of  the 
great  Professor  must  rest.     How  little  some  men, 
even  in  the  chair  of  the  teacher,  have  grasped  the 
nature  of  the  materials  for  historic  study  came  out 
in  a  curious  dialogue  which  I  had  with  an  American 


186  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

professor,  I  think  a  professor  of  history.  He  asked 
me,  "  Where  do  you  write  your  works  ?  "  "  In  my 
own  house,  to  be  sure,"  I  answered ;  "  where  else 
should  I  ?"  "  O  but  you  can't  do  them  in  your  own 
house ;  you  can't  have  the  rare  books  and  the  curious 
manuscripts;  you  must  be  always  going  to  the 
British  Museum."  He  was  a  good  deal  amazed 
when  I  explained  to  him  that  all  the  important 
books  for  my  period  were  printed,  that  I  had  them 
all  around  me  in  my  own  not  wonderfully  large 
library,  that  it  was  the  rarest  thing  for  me  in  writing 
my  history  to  need  a  book  that  was  not  in  my  library, 
that  I  had  never  in  my  life  made  use  of  the  British 
Museum  library,  and  not  very  often  of  the  Bodleian 
—that,  for  a  few  unprinted  manuscripts  which  I 
knew  would  be  of  use  to  me,  the  British  Museum 
would  give  me  no  help,  as  they  did  not  happen  to 
be  there — that,  as  a  mere  affair  of  the  pocket,  it 
was  cheaper  as  well  as  more  convenient  to  buy  books 
for  oneself,  and  to  have  them  at  home,  than  to  take 
long  journeys  in  order  to  read  other  people's  books 
elsewhere.  All  this  seemed  altogether  a  new  light 
to  my  friend.  Of  course  a  student  of  some  other 
periods  could  not  have  made  the  same  answer  that 
I  did.  There  are  times  for  which  the  library  of  the 
British  Museum,  or  in  its  measure  any  other  public 
library,  must  be  invaluable ;  but  those  times  are  not 


DIFFICULTY  OF  GETTING  BOOKS.         187 

the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries.     But  it  is  plain 
that  to  my  professor  all  centuries  were  much  alike ; 
he  knew  that  there  were  such  things  as  original 
sources,  but  they  seemed  to  him  to  be  something 
strange,    mysterious,    and   inaccessible,    something 
of  which  a  private  man  could  not  hope  to  be  the 
owner.     That  a  man  could  have  the  Chronicles  and 
Florence  and  Orderic  lying  on  his  table  as  naturally 
as  he  might  have  Csesar  and   Tacitus   had  never 
come  into  his  head.    I  heard  a  good  deal  in  America 
of  the  difficulty  of  getting  books,  which  I  did  not 
quite  understand.     It  is  surely  as  easy  to  get  a  book, 
whether  from  London  or  from  Leipzig,  in  America 
as  it  is  in  England ;  the  book  simply  takes  some 
what  longer  to  come.     But  I  can  understand  that 
American  scholars  may  keenly  feel  one  difficulty 
which  I  feel  very  keenly  too.     This  is  the  utter 
hopelessness  of  keeping  up  with  the  ever-growing 
mass  of  German  books,  and  yet  more  with  the  still 
vaster  mass  of  treatises  which  are  hidden  in  German 
periodicals  and  local  transactions.     Of  all  of  these 
every  German  scholar  expects  us  all  to  be  masters, 
while  to  most  of  us  they  are  practically  as  inaccessi 
ble  as  if  they  were  shut  up  in  the  archives  of  the 
Yatican.     When  a  German,  and  yet  more  when  a 
Swiss,  scholar  gets  any  fresh  light,  his  first  impulse 
is  carefully  to  hide  it  under  a  bushel,  and  then  he 


188  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

expects  all  mankind  to  enter  in  and  see  the  dark 
ness. 

I  think  I  may  fairly  say  that  the  state  of  things 
of  which  I  speak,  not  so  much  mere  ignorance  of 
original  sources  as  failure  to  grasp  the  existence  and 
the  nature  of  original  sources,  while  sadly  rife  in 
England,  is  yet  more  rife  in  America.  But  I  need 
hardly  say  that  America  has  men  of  sound  learning 
in  various  branches  of  knowledge  of  whom  no  land 
need  be  ashamed.  At  Harvard,  at  Yale,  at  Cornell, 
the  most  fastidious  in  the  choice  of  intellectual 
society  may  be  well  satisfied  with  his  companions. 
There,  it  is  hardly  needful  to  say,  he  will  find 
thorough  masters  of  not  a  few  subjects,  some  of 
them  indeed  men  of  world- wide  fame.  It  would  be 
invidious  to  mention  names,  and  some  of  them  are 
of  the  nature  of  that  good  wine  which  needs  no 
bush.  The  systems  of  the  two  most  famous  of  these 
institutions  differ  a  good  deal,  and  I  had  several  op 
portunities  of  hearing  the  competing  merits  of 
Harvard  and  Yale  set  forth  by  vigorous  champions 
of  each.  Yale,  the  younger  institution  of  the  two, 
boasts  specially  of  standing  fast  in  the  old  paths, 
and  of  chalking  out  definite  roads  for  both  teachers 
and  learners.  The  pride  of  Harvard  is  to  give  its 
students  the  widest  freedom  in  the  choice  of  sub 
jects,  and  its  professors  the  widest  freedom  in  the 


HARVARD  AND    YALE.  189 

way  of  dealing  with  them.  I  have  had  more  oppor 
tunity  of  judging  of  the  teachers  than  of  the  learn 
ers  ;  but,  as  far  as  I  can  venture  to  judge  of  the  mat 
ter,  I  should  be  inclined  to  say,  Let  both  systems  go 
on  side  by  side,  and  let  each  develop  itself  as  it  best 
may  in  its  own  fashion.  In  our  own  island  it  would 
be  a  distinct  loss  if  either  the  English  Universities 
took  to  imitating  the  Scottish  or  the  Scottish  Uni 
versities  to  imitating  the  English.  And  so  I  ima 
gine  that,  within  the  bounds  of  the  United  States 
and  even  within  the  bounds  of  New  England,  room 
may  be  found  both  for  the  system  of  Harvard  and 
for  the  system  of  Yale.  There  is  life  too  and  vi 
gour  in  some  of  the  younger  institutions.  Good 
work  is  done  on  the  hill  of  Ithaca,  so  lately  a  wilder 
ness,  where  the  academic  colony  of  Cornell  looks 
down  on  lake  and  village  at  its  feet.  And  I  might 
go  on  through  other  institutions  in  various  places, 
where,  besides  finding  a  kindly  welcome,  I  greeted 
here  a  scholar,  there  a  lawyer,  there  a  divine,  who 
might  hold  their  own  on  much  more  famous  spots. 
Nor  must  I  pass  by  without  a  word  the  two  great 
female  colleges  of  Yassar  and  "Wellesley,  rival  in 
stitutions,  so  say  their  enthusiastic  scholars,  after 
the  type  of  Harvard  and  Yale.  I  saw  something  of 
Yassar,  and  I  have  heard  much  of  "Wellesley,  which 
I  was  unluckily  hindered  from  visiting  in  the  body. 


190  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Wellesley   boasts   itself   of   more  strictly  carrying 
out  its  own  principles  and  more  rigidly  shutting 
out   the   ruder   sex   from   its   rule,    and    teaching. 
One  thing  is  plain,  that  both  colleges  are  set  down 
iu   most   pleasant   and   healthy  spots,   with   every 
opportunity  of   training  the  body  as  well  as  the 
mind.     But,  from  what  I  have  seen  and  heard,  I 
cannot  keep  down  a  little  doubt  whether  the  mind 
is  not  overtrained.     Girls  who  are  at  all  eager  to 
learn    are    generally   very    eager    indeed,   and    it 
struck  me  that  some  of   the  subjects  were  rather 
too  advanced  for  the  years  of  the  learners.     Per 
haps  I  have  no  right  to  speak;  for  one  subject  at 
least  was  far  too  advanced  for  me,   and  I  fancy 
for  a  good  many  others.     From  the  discourse  of  a 
(male)  professor  of  rhetoric  I  carried  off  one  phrase, 
the   "oeconomy  of   interpreting   power,"  which   I 
have  found  no  one  on  either  side  of  Ocean  able  to 
explain  to  me.     In  my  secret  heart  I  cherish  the 
hope   that   it    may   be    high-polite    for    the   wise 
precept  of  Mr.  Chucks  in  "Peter  Simple"— « Spin 
your  yarn  in  plain  English." 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  many  of  these  col 
leges  and  other  public  institutions  are  fruits  of  that 
personal  munificence  of  which  America  can  boast 
no  small  share.  The  chaplain  who  prayed  for  fresh 
benefactors  was  not  praying  for  any  miracle.  The 


COLLEGES  AND   THEIR  FOUNDERS.        191 

spirit  of  the  old  founders  of  monasteries,  colleges, 
hospitals,  schools,  lives  on  in  the  newer  England 
with  a  more  plentiful  life  than  it  now  keeps  in  the 
older.     Nor  is  it  only  the  easy  munificence  of  the 
last  will,  munificence  at  the  cost,  not  of  the  man 
himself,  but  of  his  natural  successors.     Not  a  few 
of  these  modern  founders  have,  like  their  elder  fore 
runners,  lived  to  see  their  own  creations  working. 
And  many  of  those  creations  keep  some  very  di 
rect,  and  sometimes  rather  strange,  marks  of  the 
founder's  personality  about  it.     It  is,  for  instance,  a 
strange  restriction  at  Girard  College,  Philadelphia, 
which  forbids  any  minister  of  religion,  of  whatever 
persuasion,  so  much  as  to  set  foot  within  the  walls. 
But  this  shutting  out  of  the  ministers  of  religion 
does  not  shut  out  religion  itself ;  there  is  a  chapel, 
and  worship  is  carried  on  in  it.     The  two  great 
colleges,  open  to  all  persuasions,  alike  for  teachers 
and  learners,  have  yet  each  a  dominant  theology 
and  a  dominant  worship.     Unitarianism  is  in  the 
ascendant  at  Harvard,  Congregationalism  at  Yale. 
But  each  is  simply  in  the  ascendant ;  no  one  need 
accept  the  theology  of  the  place ;  only  such  is  the 
theology  of  the  place  for  such  as  accept  it.     Cornell 
takes  a  wider  range.     There  is  a  large  chapel  with 
a  smaller  one  built  on  to  it ;  in  the  latter  the  service 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  is  regularly  said  by  a  pro- 


192  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

fessor  who  is  an  Episcopal  clergyman ;  in  the  main 
chapel  ministers  of  all  denominations,  invited  by 
the  President,  take  their  place  in  turn.  The  Koman 
Catholic  Bishop  was  invited  among  others ;  but  he 
pleaded  that  the  laws  of  his  Church  did  not  allow 
him  to  accept  the  invitation. 

I  need  hardly  say  that  in  none  of  the  American 
universities  or  colleges,  any  more  than  in  the  bodies 
which  have  of  late  taken  the  name  of  colleges 
among  ourselves,  do  we  find  the  ancient  collegiate 
system,  as  understood  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge. 
It  seems  as  hard  to  make  an  American  as  it  is  to 
make  an  European  continental  understand  the  na 
ture  of  the  single  university  with  its  many  colleges. 
I  saw  a  book  of  travels  in  England  by  an  American 
professor,  in  which,  after  a  fairly  accurate  descrip 
tion  of  Cambridge  and  what  was  to  be  seen  there, 
including  of  course  the  several  colleges,  he  wound 
up,  "  The  formal  style  of  Cambridge  College  is  ( the 
Chancellor,  Masters,  and  Scholars  of  the  University 
of  Cambridge.' "  I  have  sometimes  tried  to  explain 
the  matter  both  to  American  and  to  Swiss  hearers 
by  bringing  in  the  analogy  of  the  Union  and  the 
States.  Historically  the  analogy  is  false;  for  the 
Union  is  an  union  of  States,  while  the  University, 
older  than  the  colleges,  is  certainly  not  an  union  of 


UNIVERSITY  AND  COLLEGE.  193 

colleges.  Practically  there  is  a  good  deal  of  like 
ness.  Each  college,  like  each  State,  manages  its  in 
ternal  affairs,  but  a  single  college  can  no  more  confer 
a  degree  than  a  single  State  can  make  war  or  peace. 
An  American  college  too  has  nothing  answering  to 
the  Master,  Fellows,  and  Scholars  of  an  English 
college.  The  Fellows,  the  kernel  of  the  society, 
are  absent ;  the  name  is  sometimes  known,  but, 
when  it  is  known,  it  means  members  of  an  external 
governing  body.  Of  the  many  names  for  the  head 
to  which  we  are  used,  President  is  in  America  al 
most  universal,  though  there  is  a  Chancellor  of  an 
University  at  St.  Louis  and  a  Provost  (not  of  a  col 
lege  or  university)  at  Baltimore.  The  title  of  Pre 
sident  seems  indeed  to  be  the  favourite  in  America 
for  all  purposes.  In  England,  setting  aside  the 
great  officers  of  state  and  justice  who  bear  it,  we 
seldom  give  it  to  the  head  of  any  body  which  is  not 
in  some  way  religious,  benevolent,  literary,  scientific, 
or  artistic ;  we  never,  I  think,  give  it  to  the  head  of 
a  purely  commercial  body.  But  in  America  we 
find  the  President  of  a  railroad  and  the  President 
of  a  bank — that  is,  what  we  should  call  by  the 
simpler  name  of  Chairman.  In  the  working  of  the 
colleges  I  suspect  that  an  academic  antiquary  would 
find  out  that,  among  some  novelties,  some  old  things 
have  been  preserved.  All  the  colleges  seem  to  have 


194  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   U SITED  STATES. 

a  course  of  four  years,  and  the  students  of  the  four 
years  are  Freshmen,  Sophomores,  Juniors,  and  Se 
niors  severally.  The  question  at  once  starts  itself, 
Why  is  the  "  Junior"  so  called  in  his  third  year 
and  not  in  his  first  ?  The  answer  is  that  "  Junior" 
and  "  Senior"  are  short  for  "Junior -Sophist"  and 
"Senior  Sophist."  We  have  here  in  short  the 
Generalis  Sophista,  the  man  of  two  years'  standing 
who  has  passed  his  "  responsions,"  who  was  not 
quite  forgotten  at  Oxford  in  my  younger  days,  and 
who,  I  believe,  is  better  known  both  at  Cambridge 
and  at  Dublin.  The  "  Sophomore,"  who  sounds  as 
if  he  were  a  wise  fool,  a  follower  of  James  Sixth 
and  First,  is  more  puzzling;  but  I  believe  he  is 
not  an  American  invention ;  traces  of  him  have 
been  found  by  curious  eyes  on  this  side  of  Ocean 
also.  The  odd  thing  is  that  these  same  names 
are  used  in  the  girls'  colleges  also,  and  moreover 
a  young  lady  becomes  in  due  time  Bachelor  and 
Master  of  Arts.  I  was  a  little  puzzled  by  the 
strong  tie,  expressed  by  the  name  "  classmate," 
which  is  held  to  exist  between  men  who  have  en 
tered  college  at  the  same  time.  I  could  not  remem 
ber  anything  the  least  like  it  at  Oxford ;  when  I 
came  to  think,  I  remembered  that  my  most  intimate 
friends  did  not  happen  to  be  men  of  exactly  my 
own  standing,  but  men  a  little  older  or  younger. 


COLLEGE  PHRASES.  195 

But  it  really  only  answers  to  the  Cambridge  plirase 
of  "  men  of  my  year,"  which  I  believe  is  looked 
upon  as  a  tie  of  some  strength.  Still  I  never  fully 
grasped  the  idea  of  the  "class"  and  the  "class 
mate  ;"  and  I  still  do  not  understand  how  all  the 
men  of  the  same  year,  who  must  differ  vastly  in 
abilities  and  attainments,  can  be  driven  with  any 
profit  through  the  same  course.  Some  other 
phrases  that  puzzled  me  I  came  more  easily  to  un 
derstand.  I  was  startled  by  hearing  a  young  man 
saying  that  he  had  to  go  to  his  "recitation;"  it 
gave  me  the  idea  of  a  little  boy  repeating  "My 
name  is  ISTorval."  But  I  found  that  a  "  recitation" 
was  much  the  same  as  what  I  should  understand  by 
a  "college  lecture" — I  mean  as  college  lectures 
were  forty  years  back — and  I  feel  sure  that  the 
name  is  not  a  new  one.  "  Commencement,"  the 
great  academic  ceremony  of  the  year,  bears  a  name 
which  is  unknown  at  Oxford,  but  which  is  perfectly 
familiar  at  Cambridge. 

The  time  of  the  year  at  which  I  was  in  America 
did  not  enable  me  to  see  a  college  commencement ; 
but  I  fancy  it  must  be  a  scene  of  a  good  deal  of  in 
terest.  At  Harvard  I  was  told  that  the  Governor 
of  Massachusetts  comes  out  with  an  escort  of  fifty 
horse,  himself  in  plain  clothes,  but  with  aides-de 
camp  in  splendid  uniforms.  He  is,  I  fear,  received 


196  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

by  an  University  in  plain  clothes.  Any  academic 
garb,  as  a  regular  thing,  seems  to  have  quite  va 
nished,  though  I  came  to  one  or  two  colleges  where 
the  students  themselves  were  making  praiseworthy 
efforts  to  revive  the  use  of  the  square  cap.  Nor  is 
the  ancient  statute  of  Yale  College  now  'observed, 
which  required  a  student  to  make  obeisance  if  he 
came  within  a  certain  measured  distance  of  a  pro 
fessor,  and  which  forbade  him  to  come  at  all  within 
a  certain  smaller  measured  distance.  But  that  was 
in  days  when  Yale  taught  the  Ptolemaic  astronomy, 
which  it  certainly  does  not  teach  now. 

But,  while  speaking  of  the  American  colleges 
and  the  general  intellectual  culture  of  the  country, 
there  is  one  case  in  which  I  must  stop  to  make  a 
more  special  mention.  There  is  a  school  of  Ameri 
can  scholarship  growing  up,  whose  researches  come 
specially  home  to  me.  Students  of  early  English 
history  and  language  have  had  of  late  to  acknow 
ledge  much  valuable  help  in  several  shapes  from  the 
western  branch  of  their  people.  But  the  school  of 
which  I  have  to  speak  is  one  which,  among  its  other 
merits,  has  the  special  merit  of  being  distinctively 
American,  of  being  the  natural  and  wholesome  fruit 
of  American  soil.  Its  researches  have  taken  that 
special  direction  which  one  might  say  that  Ameri 
can  research  was  called  upon  to  take  before  all 


STUDY  OF  LOCAL  HISTORY.  197 

others.  The  new  school  is  the  natural  comple 
ment  of  an  elder  school  whicn  has  been  useful  in 
its  time,  but  which  could  at  the  utmost  serve  only  as 
the  pioneer  towards  something  higher.  I  mean 
the  school  of  the  older  local  historians  of  Ameri 
ca.  Even  from  the  days  before  independence,  such 
local  writers  have  never  been  lacking.  Every  State, 
every  district,  almost  every  township,  has  found  its 
chronicler.  And  worthily  so  ;  for  every  State,  eve 
ry  district,  every  township,  has  its  history.  In 
New  England  above  all,  the  history  of  even  the 
smallest  community  has  some  political  instruction 
to  give  us.  The  history  of  New  England  is  a 
history  of  exactly  the  same  kind  as  the  history  of 
old  Greece  or  of  mediaeval  Switzerland,  the  history 
of  a  great  number  of  small  communities,  each  full 
of  political  life,  most  of  them  reproducing  ancient 
forms  of  Teutonic  political  life  which  have  died 
out  in  the  elder  England  and  which  live  only 
among  the  lakes  and  mountains  of  the  elder 
Switzerland.  The  institutions  of  any  community 
in  the  Thirteen  Colonies,  above  all  of  any  com 
munity  in  New  England,  are  more  than  a  mere 
object  of  local  interest  and  curiosity.  They  show 
us  the  institutions  of  the  elder  England,  neither 
slavishly  carried  on  nor  scornfully  cast  aside,  but 
reproduced  with  such  changes  as  changed  circum- 


198  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

stances  called  for,  and  those  for  the  most  part 
changes  in  the  direction  of  earlier  times.  As  many 
of  the  best  reforms  in  our  own  land  have  been— 
often  unwittingly,  and  when  unwittingly  all  the 
better — simply  fallings  back  on  the  laws  and  cus 
toms  of  earlier  times,  so  it  has  specially  been  with 
those  reforms  which  were  needed  when  the  newer 
England  arose  on  the  western  shore  of  Ocean. 
The  old  Teutonic  assembly,  rather  the  old  Aryan 
assembly,  which  had  not  long  died  out  in  the 
Frisian  sea-lands,  which  still  lived  on  in  the 
Swabian  mountain-lands,  rose  again  to  full  life  in 
the  New  England  town-meeting.  Here  we  have, 
supplied  by  the  New  England  States,  a  direct  con- 
tribution,  and  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  contri 
butions,  to  the  general  history  of  Teutonic  political 
life,  and  thereby  to  the  general  history  of  common 
Aryan  political  life.  And  other  parts  of  the 
Union  also,  though  their  contributions  are  on  the 
whole  of  less  interest  than  those  of  New  England, 
have  something  to  add  to  the  common  stock. 
Each  of  the  colonies  reproduced  some  features  of 
English  life  ;  but  different  colonies  reproduced 
different  sides  and,  so  to  speak,  different  dates  of 
English  life.  All  these  points  in  the  local  history 
of  the  colonies  need  to  be  put  in  their  right  rela 
tion,  both  to  one  another  and  to  other  English,  other 


JOUX8  HOPK1XS    UNIVERSITY.  199 

Teutonic,  other  Aryan,  institutions.      This  would 
seem  to  be  a  study  to  which  the  scholars  of  the 
United  States  are  specially  called.     The  study  of  in 
stitutions,  the  scientific  exposition  of  what  America 
has  to  teach  us  on  that  head,  has  been  taken  up  by 
those  who  have  come  in  the  wake  of  the  older  school 
of  American  inquirers.     On  the  more  homely  re 
searches  of  the  local  chronicler  has  naturally  fol 
lowed  a  newer  and  more  advanced  class  of  inquirers, 
men  who  not  only  collect  facts,  but  who  know  how 
to  put  the  facts  which  they  collect  into  their  proper 
place  in  the  general  history  of  mankind.     A  young 
and  growing  school,  which  still  has  difficulties  to 
struggle  against,  may  be  glad  of  a  good  word  on 
either  side  of  Ocean.     I  cannot  help  mentioning  the 
school  which  is  now  devoting  itself  to  the  special 
study  of  local  institutions,  a  school  which  is  spread 
over  various  parts  of  the  Union,  but  which  seems  to 
have  its  special  home  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  Uni 
versity  at  Baltimore,  as  one  from  which  great  things 
may  be  looked  for.      Nor  can  I  help  adding  the 
name  of  my  friend  Mr.  Herbert  B.  Adams  as  that 
of  one  who  has  done  much  for  the  work,  and  who, 
to  me  at  least,  specially  represents  it.     To  trace  out 
the  local  institutions,  and  generally  the  local  history 
of  their  own  land,  to  compare  them  with  the  history 
and  institutions  of  elder  lands,  to  show  that  it  is 


200  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

only  on  the  surface  that  their  own  land  lacks  the 
charm  of  antiquity,  is  the  work  which  seems  chalked 
out  for  the  inquirers  of  this  school,  and  a  noble  and 
patriotic  work  it  is.  An  eye  accustomed  to  trace 
the  likenesses  and  unlikenesses  of  history  will  re 
joice  to  see  the  Germans  of  Tacitus  live  once  more 
in  the  popular  gatherings  of  New  England — to  see 
in  the  strong  life  of  Rhode  Island  a  new  Appenzell 
beyond  the  Ocean — to  see  the  Great  City  of  Arcadia 
rise  again  in  the  federal  capital  by  the  Potomac. 
North  and  South,  and  the  older  West  also,  has  each 
its  help  to  give,  its  materials  to  furnish.  Yiewed 
rightly,  with  the  eye  of  general  history,  it  is  no 
mean  place  in  the  annals  of  the  world  that  falls  to 
the  lot  of  the  two  great  commonwealths  between 
which  the  earliest,  and  till  our  own  days  the  greatest, 
presidencies  of  the  American  Union  were  so  un 
equally  divided. 

XIII. 

I  now  come  to  some  more  strictly  social  matters. 
Of  "society"  in  the  technical  sense,  the  sense  which 
gives  rise  to  the  odd  New  York  phrases  of  "society 
woman"  and  "society  girl,"  the  "society"  whose 
doings  are  so  diligently  and  wonderfully  recorded 
in  the  New  York  newspapers,  I  do  not  suppose  that 


SOCIETY.  201 

I  saw  very  much.  I  should  doubtless  be  out  of 
place  among  those  who 

"Fiddle  and  dance  de  whole  night  froo," 

whether  the  fiddling  and  dancing  is  or  is  not  the 
outward  sign  of  any  particular  theology.  I  re 
ceived  a  great  deal  of  very  kind  hospitality,  both 
at  New  York  and  in  other  places,  and  I  made  many 
acquaintances  which  I  hope  to  keep  ;  but  I  do  not 
presume  to  think  that  I  penetrated  to  the  centre  of 
social,  any  more  than  of  political,  life.  And  I  con 
fess  that  the  thought  has  sometimes  come  into  my 
head  whether  a  city  like  Bern  or  Athens,  which  is 
the  political  centre  of  a  people,  but  where  "  society," 
in  the  sense  which  that  word  bears  in  London  and 
New  York,  does  not  exist,  really  loses  anything  by 
the  lack  of  it.  And  the  thought  has  also  come  into 
my  head,  whether,  supposing  "  society"  to  exist,  a 
court  or  something  like  a  court — notwithstanding 
all  the  manifold  evils  of  a  court — may  not  have  its 
good  side.  But  these  are  abstract  speculations.  Of 
the  wonderful  goings  on  at  those  gatherings  where 
each  young  man  is  expected  to  give  each  young 
woman  a  nosegay  worth  a  man's  ransom  I  cannot 
speak  from  my  own  knowledge.  Of  more  sober 
dinners  and  other  receptions  I  might  say  a  good 
deal;  but  at  such  entertainments,  often  got  up 


202  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

specially  for  a  stranger,  one  can  judge  but  im 
perfectly  of  the  way  in  which  people  live  among 
themselves.  But  I  may  notice,  and  I  have  heard 
the  same  remark  from  others,  that  immediate 
national  politics  seem  not  to  form  so  constant  a 
subject  of  discourse  in  America  as  they  do  in 
England.  This,  I  suppose,  has  something  to  do 
with  the  same  set  of  causes  which  has  given  the 
word  "politics"  the  special  and  not  altogether 
pleasant  meaning  which  it  bears  in  America. 
The  divorce  between  politics  and  society,  or  indeed 
between  politics  and  the  higher  culture,  strikes 
one  very  strongly.  It  may  be  -one  of  the  weak 
points  of  a  federal  system  that  the  highest  range 
of  politics  is  not  so  directly  brought  before  every 
man  as  it  is  in  a  kingdom  or  commonwealth  of 
another  kind.  The  questions  which  come  more  im 
mediately  before  him,  the  politics  of  the  State  or 
the  city,  may  well  have  a  side  which  is  repulsive 
to  the  cultivated  man ;  and  the  result  may  be  that 
federal  politics  themselves  fall  too  largely  into  the 
hands  of  a  class  of  professional  "  politicians."  The 
difference  between  paid  and  unpaid  members,  paid 
and  unpaid  officers  of  various  kinds,  must  also  make 
a  difference.  The  ideal  state  of  things  would  surely 
be  one  in  which  the  members  of  the  legislature 
should  neither  be  paid  nor  be  called*  on  to  pay. 


LACK  OF  POLITICAL   TALK.  203 

Mr.  Biyce  pointed  out  not  long  ago  ("  Fortnightly 
Keview,"  November,  1882)  that  what  are  commonly 
thought  to  be  the  evils  of  American  political  life 
are  neither  so  great  nor  so  universal  as  they  seem. 
Still  there  is  in  America  a  divorce  between  political 
and  social  life ;  and  the  federal  system  may  well  be 
one  cause  of  it,  both  by  hindering  the  existence  of 
a  real  capital  and  in  other  ways.  I  have  remarked 
something  of  the  same  kind  in  Switzerland.  There 

O 

too  national  politics  seem  riot  to  occupy  men's 
minds  in  the  same  way  in  which  they  do  in  Eng 
land.  The  President  of  the  Swiss  Confederation  is 
a  much  smaller  person  than  either  the  American 
President  or  the  English  Prime  Minister,  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  the  power  which  most  nearly 
answers  to  the  President  or  the  Prime  Minister  is  the 
Federal  Council  as  a  whole,  and  not  its  chairman 
personally.  Still  it  seemed  to  be  odd  that  very  in 
telligent  people  in  Switzerland  were  sometimes  not 
able  to  say  offhand  who  was  the  President  of  the 
year.  Anyhow,  whatever  may  be  the  cause,  it  is, 
to  say  the  least,  unlucky  when  any  class,  above  all 
when  the  most  cultivated  class,  shrinks  from  poli 
tical  life  or  ceases  to  take  an  interest  in  political 
affairs.  If  politics  are  rougher  in  America  than 
they  are  in  England,  if  they  are  likely  to  be  rougher 
in  England  than  they  have  been  hitherto,  that  is 


204  UfP£l&S8IOff8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

no  real  reason  for  shrinking  from  them,  but  the 
opposite. 

But  it  is  on  some  other  and  smaller  aspects  of 
American  life  that  I  wish  now  to  speak.  I  have 
noticed  at  one  or  two  earlier  stages  the  way  in 
which  the  British  visitor  is  struck  with  the  con 
stant  absence  of  ceremony  on  public  occasions 
where  AVC  should  have  looked  for  some  measure  of 
form  and  state.  There  seems,  for  instance,  to  be  a 
general  dislike  to  the  wearing  of  any  kind  of  official 
dress.  In  matters  of  this  kind  I  fancy  that  a  good 
deal  has  been  consciously  dropped  out  of  a  notion 
of  "  republican  simplicity."  This  is  a  feeling  which 
I  cannot  enter  into.  Whatever  honour  a  free  com 
monwealth  shows  to  its  chosen  magistrates  is  surely 
honour  done  to  itself.  If  I  were  to  speak  of  the 
magistrates  of  old  Rome,  with  their  lictors  and 
their  official  ornaments,  I  might  be  told  that  Rome, 
if  a  commonwealth,  was  an  aristocratic  common 
wealth.  But  there  never  was  a  purer  democracy 
than  that  of  Uri,  and  the  Landammann  of  Uri 
keeps — at  least  he  kept  eighteen  years  back — no 
small  measure  of  official  state.  And  indeed,  even 
in  the  United  States  themselves,  some  degree  of 
official  pomp  cannot  be  got  rid  of  on  all  occasions. 
I  have  mentioned  the  Governor  of  Massachusetts  as 
keeping  some  measure  of  dignity  about  him  ;  I  saw 


LACK  OF  OFFICIAL  DRESS.  205 

the  late  Governor  enter  his  capital,  undecorated 
certainly  as  far  as  his  own  person  was  concerned, 
but  otherwise  surrounded  by  a  degree  of  pomp  and 
circumstance  which  reminded  me  of  the  triumph 
of  Marcus  Furius  Camillus.  And,  in  private  life, 
the  American  strikes  me  as,  on  the  whole,  more 
ceremonious  than  the  Englishman  on  this  side  of 
Ocean.  I  do  not  profess  to  know  how  far  this  may 
be  owing  to  the  absence  of  acknowledged  artificial 
distinctions,  but  it  seeems  not  unlikely  that  the  two 
things  may  have  something  to  do  with  one  another. 
It  certainly  did  strike  me  on  the  whole  that,  among 
those  with  whom  I  had  to  do  in  America,  there 
was  not  less,  but  more,  attention  paid  to  minute  ob 
servances  than  there  is  in  England. 

But  here  again  our  universal  rule  steps  in.  In 
some  cases  certainly  the  difference  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  England  has  dropped  ceremonial  usages 
which  have  lived  on  in  America.  Take  for  in 
stance  the  commonest  forms  of  address.  The 
British  visitor  in  America  is  a  little  surprised  at 
being  called  "  Sir"  in  private  life,  at  all  events  at 
being  called  so  a  great  deal  oftener  than  he  ever  is 
in  his  own  island.  The  word  perhaps  grates  a  little 
on  his  ears.  But  he  has  only  to  turn  to  his  Bos- 
well  to  see  that  America  has  in  this  small  matter 
simply  kept  on  an  usage  which  England  has 


206  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

dropped.  And  this  is  a  matter  in  which  England 
stands  almost  alone  in  the  world.  The  French 
man,  at  all  events,  has  his  "  Monsieur,"  "  Madame," 
and  "Mademoiselle"  ever  on  his,  lips,  in  a  way 
which  the  Englishman  finds  it  a  little  hard  to  follow. 
In  England  we  seem  to  have  a  growing  tendency  to 
get  rid  of  the  vocative  case  altogether.  And  in  the 
many  cases  when  a  man  is  not  quite  sure  what  is 
the  right  formula  to  use,  when,  for  instance,  he  is 
inclined  to  familiarity  but  is  not  quite  sure  whether 
familiarity  will  be  welcome,  it  is  wonderful  how 
long  he  may  go  on  without  ever  using  the  vocative. 
And,  without  going  to  this  extreme,  it  is  certainly 
not  thought  elegant  in  England  to  indulge  very 
greatly  in  its  use.  No  one  wishes  his  name  or  title 
to  be  brought  in  with  every  breath.  But  in  Ame 
rica,  besides  the  use  of  "  Sir"  in  a  way  which  has 
died  out  in  England,  no  one  can  fail  to  remark  the 
supposed  necessity  of  giving  everybody  some  kind 
of  title.  Now  it  must  always  be  remembered  that 
the  strongest  sign  of  an  inherent  love  of  titles  is 
to  be  found,  not  in  the  use  of  titles  like  Duke, 
Bishop,  General,  but  in  the  use  of  plain  "  Mr.," 
"Mrs.,"  and  "Miss."  The  higher  titles  are  not 
mere  titles;  they  state  a  fact  about  the  man  to 
whom  they  are  applied ;  they  tell  you  that  he  is  a 
bishop,  a  duke,  or  a  general.  But  "  Mr.,"  "  Mrs.," 


MODES  OF  ADDRESS.  207 

and  "  Miss"  tell  you  nothing ;  they  are  used  wholly 
to  avoid  the  supposed  impropriety  of  calling  people, 
as  of  old  at  Athens  and  now  in  Iceland,  simply  by 
their   names.     In  America  it  is  distinctly  harder 
than  it  is  in  England  to  get  people  with  whom  you 
are  really  intimate  to  drop  the  "Mr.,"  and  use  sim 
ply  the   surname.     And   I  noticed  that  men  who 
were  thoroughly  intimate  with   one  another,  men 
who  were  old  friends  and  colleagues,  spoke  of  and 
to  one  another  with  handles  to  their  name,  in  a  way 
in  which  men  in  the  same  case  would  not  do  here. 
On  the  other  hand,  men  are  constantly  spoken  of 
in  the  newspapers  by  their  mere  Christian  and  sur 
names  in  a  way  to  which  we  are  not  used  in  print. 
But  in  my  own  experience  it  was  a  relief  when  I 
escaped   with   simple  "Mr."     I   generally  had  to 
writhe  under   the   ugly  titles   of    "Professor"    or 
"  Doctor."     Why  anybody  should  mistake  me  for 
a  professor,  or  why  anybody  should  thrust  the  title 
of  "  Doctor"  on  the  bearer  of  a  purely  unprofes 
sional  and  honorary  degree,  was  beyond  my  under 
standing.     I  asked  not  uncommonly  whether  they 
talked  of  "Dr.  Gladstone."     In  one  famous  uni 
versity  town  I  was  able  to  turn  the  tables  on  my 
friends,  and  to  ask  them  why  they  should  either 
call  me  "Professor"  or  wish  to   be  called   "Pro 
fessor"  themselves,  when  there  was  in    their  own 


208  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

city  a  "Professor  Parker,"  showing  off  dancing 
dogs.  In  some  parts  a  stranger  is  commonly  ad 
dressed  as  "Colonel"  or  "Judge."  I  was  never 
addressed  as  "  Colonel,"  save  once  at  Baltimore,  and 
that  in  the  dark ;  so  it  was  hardly  because  of  any 
specially  military  air  about  me.  "  Judge"  I  never 
was  called ;  though,  as  I  happen  to  have  something 
to  do  with  judging,  while  I  have  nothing  to  do 
with  teaching,  it  would  have  been  one  degree  less 
out  of  place  than  "Professor."  But,  though  these 
queer  titles  are  a  little  trying  to  a  stranger,  the  ap 
plication  of  them  is  thoroughly  well  meant,  accord 
ing  to  the  custom  of  the  country.  It  seems  as  if 
no  one  in  America  could  do  without  some  kind  of 
handle.  We  are  used  to  "  Governor  A. ;"  but 
"  Mayor  B."  and  "  Minister  C."  sound  to  us  odd. 
But  more  than  once,  when  I  had  been  introduced 
to  "  Governor  A."  and  had  put  myself  into  a  proper 
mood  of  respect  towards  the  chief  magistrate  of  the 
State,  I  found  that  all  that  was  meant  was  that  the 
gentleman  to  whom  I  was  speaking  had  been  Go 
vernor  in  times  past.  In  language  that  is  at  all  pre 
cise  it  is  counted  more  correct  to  say  in  such  cases 
"  Ex-Governor" — as  if  one  should  say  "  Ex-High- 
Sheriff  B."— but  the  "Ex-"  is  certainly  often 
dropped.  And  the  title  given  to  the  husband  often 
extends  to  the  wife.  I  have  seen  "  Mrs.  Professor" 


USE  OF  TITLES.  209 

on  a  lady's  card,  and  the  newspapers  sometimes  tell 
one  how  "Mrs.  Ex-Senator  A."  went  somewhere 
with  her  daughter  "Mrs.  Senator  B."  Nor  is  it 
always  easy  to  remember  all  among  the  large  class  of 
people  who  are  called  "  Honourable  ;"  and  I  found 
that  "Esquire"  as  an  address  was  chiefly  applied  to 
lawyers.  Among  these,  by  the  way,  the  formula 
"Attorney-  and  Counsellor-at-law,"  preserving  two 
names  which  in  England  have  perished,  is  quite  the 
right  thing.  I  was  little  surprised  at  the  vanishing 
of  "Esquire."  "George  Washington,  of  Mount 
Yernon,  Esq."  was  a  description  with  which  I  was 
quite  familiar,  and  I  had  often  seen  the  title  "  Es 
quire"  in  American  books  and  stories.  But  there  is 
a  trace  of  its  earlier  use  in  the  phrase  commonly 
used  in  some  States  of  "  being  brought  before  the 
squire,"  meaning  before  a  magistrate  of  any  kind. 

Now  this  lavish  use  of  titles  is  universal ;  so  it 
is  to  be  supposed  that  people  like  it.  Yet  in  one 
most  distinguished  University  I  was  told  by  more 
than  one  professor  that  he  liked  better  to  be  ad 
dressed  simply  as  a  gentleman,  or  better  still  as 
a  man,  without  any  official  title.  But  the  really 
important  point  is  that,  in  this  matter  also,  Ameri 
can  usage  is  older  than  English  usage,  and  is  cer 
tainly  more  consistent.  We  have  the  practice  of 
other  European  nations  against  us.  Thick  on  the 


210  LUPRE8SIOX8  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

ground  as  handles  are  in  America,  they  are  still 
thicker  in  Germany,  and  they  are  much  more  freely 
extended  to  men's  wives.  Then  in  America  and 
in  Germany  the  thing  is  thoroughly  carried  out ; 
in  England  it  is  hard  to  find  out  the  principle  on 
which  the  handle  is  sometimes  used  and  sometimes 
not,  As  to  the  wives,  our  rule  seems  to  be  that, 
while  any  kind  of  rank  which  is  strictly  personal, 
whether  hereditary  or  otherwise,  any  rank  from 
duke  to  knight  or  even  esquire,  is  shared  by  the 
wife,  strictly  official  rank  is  not.  The  dignity  of 
the  bishop,  the  judge,  the  sheriff,  is  not  shared  by 
his  wife.  Yet  there  is  one  notable  exception.  The 
Mayoress,  in  London  and  York  the  Lady  Mayoress, 
has  her  undoubted  place,  and  in  London  at  least 
the  dignity  is  transferable ;  the  Lady  Mayoress  may 
chance  to  be,  not  the  wife,  but  the  daughter  or  sister, 
of  the  Lord  Mayor.  Now  "  Mrs.  Professor"  sounds 
very  ugly  to  us ;  but  in  Germany  "  Fran  Profes- 
sorin"  is  universal,  and  it  is  hard  to  see  how  she 
differs  in  principle  from  the  Lady  Mayoress.  Then 
again  it  sounds  odd  to  British  ears  to  hear  a  young 
lady  spoken  to  or  of  by  any  one  above  the  rank  of 
a  servant  or  other  inferior  as  "  Miss  Mary."  But 
this  again  was  once  universal,  if  not  with  the  mo 
dern  "Miss,"  yet  certainly  with  the  older  "Mis 
tress."  This  last  form  at  least  is  graceful,  and 

r^ 


FEELING  AS  TO  PRECEDENCE. 

so  it  sounds  in  some  other  tongues,  in  Greek  above 
all. 

If   there   is  any  rule  of   precedence   in   private 
American  society,  I  was  not  able  to  catch  it.     But 
I  was  once  a  little  amazed  at  the  question  of  a  most 
cultivated  American  lady,  one  who  knows  England 
well,  whether  in  England  any  one  who  might  be 
supposed   to   be   at  all  personally  known  did  not 
feel    annoyed    at    being    placed    after   a   man   of 
higher    rank    who    had    no    claim    to    distinction 
beyond  that  of  being  of  higher  rank.     In  England, 
where  the  virtual  ruler  of  the  country  holds  a  for 
mal  position  far  below  many  whose  higher  position 
is  his  own  gift,  the  thought  probably  never  enters 
into  any  man's  head.     I  could  only  tell  my  ques 
tioner  that  I  could  not  answer  for  others,  but  that 
such  a  thought  had  certainly  never  come  into  my 
own  head.     I  said  that  I  no  more  thought  of  re 
pining  because  A.  or  B.  was  of  higher  rank  than 
myself  than  I  thought  of  repining  because  he  was 
younger   or  taller   or   handsomer  than  I  was.     In 
either  case  facts  are  facts,  and  the  facts  are  no  fault 
either  of  his  or  of  mine.     I  told  her  that  in  such 
a  case  no  kind  of  wrong  was  done,  no  affront  wraa 
meant  or  thought  of  on  either  side,  that  the  whole 
thing  was   a   matter  of   course,  like   an   order   of 
nature,  of   which   nobody  thought   at  all.     But  I 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

found  that  the  American  lady  did  not  in  the  least 
enter  into  iny  feelings. 

The  rare  use  of  the  word  "  esquire"  may  have 
something  to  do  with  the  total,  or  nearly  total, 
disappearance  of  the  thing.  There  certainly  once 
were  country-gentlemen  in  the  North  as  well  as  in 
the  South.  The  "Patroon"  is  gone  ;  but  his  me 
mory  is  not  forgotten  ;  and  the  Patroon  was  not  a 
solitary  being,  but  the  chief  member  of  a  class. 
That  the  class  should  die  out  is  not  unnatural  where 
the  law  of  equal  division  exists ;  yet  in  France  some 
relics  of  the  class  do  continue  to  linger  on  in  spite 
of  it.  And,  from  a  hill  in  New  England  which 
commanded  a  wide  view,  a  local  friend  pointed  out 
two  houses  the  owners  of  which  he  said  still  kept 
up  something  of  the  position  of  English  squires, 
and  were  popularly  called  by  that  title.  Still  such 
cases  must  certainly  be  exceptional.  American 
life,  as  a  rule,  centres  in  the  towns ;  indeed  many 
Americans  seem  unable  to  understand  any  life 
which  does  not  centre  in  a  town.  In  my  own 
case  most  people  seemed  to  assume  that  I  must  live 
either  in  London  or  in  Oxford,  or,  as  some,  I  know 
not  wherefore,  suggested,  in  Manchester.  The 
idea  that  a  man,  at  all  events  that  a  man  who  wrote 
books,  could  live  in  his  own  house  among  his  own 
fields  seemed  altogether  strange  to  them.  It  is  not 


LOVE  OF  TOWN-LIFE.  213 

that  there  are  no  country-houses  in  America  ;  very 
far  from  it;  he  who  can  afford  it  has  both  his 
country-house  and  his  town-house.  But  he  who 
cannot  afford  both  has  his  town-house  only,  and 
with  him  who  has  both  the  country-house  is  quite 
subordinate  to  the  town-house.  The  town-house  is 
the  real  home ;  the  country-house  is  merely  the 
place  for  an  occasional  sojourn.  A  rich  man,  say 
at  New  York,  who  could  afford  to  make,  if  he  could 
not  find  ready  made,  the  stateliest  of  parks  and 
country-houses,  prefers  to  build  a  grand  house  in  a 
New  York  street,  while  his  country-house  is  an 
altogether  secondary  matter.  And  the  country- 
house  again  is  very  often  not  quite  what  we  should 
understand  by  a  country-house  in  England.  It 
often  comes  nearer  to  the  nature  of  a  "  villa ;"  it 
often  has  neighbours  too  near  to  it  to  be  altogether 
the  real  article.  The  lack  of  real  country-life  is 
shown  by  some  of  the  forms  of  summer  relaxation 
in  America.  "  Camping-out"  in  the  wilderness 
doubtless  has  its  pleasures,  but  it  is  more  likely  to 
suggest  itself  by  way  of  violent  contrast  to  the  in 
habitant  of  a  town  than  to  one  whose  daily  portion 
lies  among  woods  and  fields  of  some  kind.  The 
feeling  of  the  rich  American  seems  to  be  altogether 
different  from  the  feeling  of  most  men  in  England, 
whether  of  inherited  or  of  acquired  wealth.  The 


214  IMPRS88ION8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

one  lias  already,  the  other  buys  or  builds,  his  house 
in  the  country.  He  doubtless  has  his  town-house 
too ;  but  it  is  his  country-house  which  comes  first 
and  is  really  his  home.  The  English  gentleman  is 
Mr.  A.  of  such  a  place  in  the  country,  who  most 
likely  has  his  house  in  London  also.  The  American 
gentleman  is  Mr.  B.  of  such  a  city,  who  most  likely 
has  his  house  in  the  country  also. 

In  this  matter  of  town  and  country,  the  vast  ex 
tent  of  the  United  States  combines  with  their  poli 
tical  constitution  to  cause  another  difference  between 
England  and  America.  In  England  we  have  only 
one  centre,  that  wonderful  something — for  a  city 
we  cannot  call  it  in  its  aggregate — which  is  at  once 
a  political,  a  social,  and  a  literary  centre.  London 
has  lately  been  taught  that,  in  a  political  sense,  it  is 
not  England ;  but  it  none  the  less  is,  and  it  more 
and  more  thoroughly  becomes,  the  one  centre  of 
England.  Neither  the  Universities  nor  the  great 
commercial  cities — and  there  is  now  happily  one 
English  city  which  may  claim  both  names — are 
centres  in  the  same  sense.  Purely  local  centres, 
neither  academical  nor  commercial,  some  of  which 
still  held  their  place  a  hundred  years  back,  have,  as 
centres,  simply  vanished.  London  keeps  its  old 
place,  and  it  has  taken  the  place  of  the  local  centres 
as  well.  But  no  one  American  city  can,  as  things 


MANY  CENTRES.  215 

now  stand,  take  the  place  which.  London  holds  in 
England.  For  no  American  city  is  at  once  the 
greatest  city  in  the  land  and  at  the  same  time  the 
seat  of  the  national  government.  To  make  an 
American  London,  New  York  and  Washington 
must  be  rolled  into  one.  But  New  York  and 
Washington  rolled  into  one  would  not  really  make 
an  American  London.  The  size  of  the  country,  its 
federal  constitution,  would,  either  of  them  alone,  be 
enough  to  hinder  any  city  from  becoming  the  one 
real  national  centre,  like  a  great  European  capital. 
No  city  can  be  a  real  national  centre  to  people  who 
live  three  thousand  miles  off.  Even  if  it  could  be 
so  for  political  purposes,  it  could  not  be  so  for 
social  purposes.  And  under  a  federal  system, 
where  each  State  does  for  itself  so  large  a  part  of 
what  we  should  call  national  business,  the  central 
attraction  is  necessarily  divided.  If  no  place  with 
in  the  State  can  be  all  that  a  national  capital  is  in 
an  ordinary  kingdom  or  commonwealth,  so  neither 
can  any  place  out  of  the  State.  And  when,  as  in 
many  States,  old  and  new,  the  State  capital  is  not 
fixed  in  the  greatest  city  of  the  State,  the  attraction 
is  divided  again.  Philadelphia  certainly  remains 
the  head  of  Pennsylvania  in  a  sense  in  which 
Harrisburg  is  not.  It  remains  the  head  of  Penn 
sylvania  in  a  sense  in  which  we  can  hardly  believe 


216  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

that  even  York  and  Exeter  ever  were  the  centres 
of  their  several  counties,  in  a  sense  in  which  they 
certainly  have  long  ceased  to  be  their  centres. 
In  England  therefore  there  is  'but  one  centre; 
in  America  there  are  many.  In  England  we 
may  say  that,  setting  aside  London  and  a  few 
towns  of  special  character  like  Brighton,  Bath, 
Cheltenham,  no  one  lives  in  a  town  unless  he  has 
some  business,  official  or  professional,  which  makes 
him  live  there.  In  America,  on  the  one  hand, 
men  live  in  towns  who  have  no  official  or  pro 
fessional  necessity  to  live  in  them,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  professional  and  mercantile  classes 
necessarily  hold  a  higher  comparative  position  in 
America  than  they  do  here.  Every  large  town 
therefore  becomes  a  social  centre  in  a  way  in 
which  it  cannot  be  in  England.  New  York  has  one 
kind  of  attraction,  Washington  has  another;  but 
the  whole  country  does  not  press  to  either  of  them 
in  the  way  in  which  all  England  presses  to  London, 
and  to  London  only.  London  is  something  dif 
ferent  in  kind  from  any  other  English  town ;  New 
York  is  simply  another  American  town  on  a 
greater  scale.  It  must  never  be  forgotten  that 
New  York,  though  it  calls  itself  a  "  metropolis," 
though  I  have  even  known  its  newspapers  sneer  at 
the  rest  of  the  country  as  "  provinces,"  is  in  no 


NEW  YORK.  217 

sense  a  capital.  So  fur  from  being  the  capital 
of  the  United  States,  it  is  not  even  the  capital  of 
the  State  of  New  York.  It  is  simply  the  biggest 
town  in  the  State  and  in  the  Union.  Washington, 
as  the  seat  of  the  federal  government  and  the 
dwelling-place  of  foreign  ministers,  is  something 
different  in  kind  from  any  other  American  town ; 
but  then  it  has  not  enough  of  size  or  importance  in 
other  ways  to  make  it  a  general  centre.  One  sees 
this  in  the  newspaper  press.  Owing  to  the  multi 
plicity  of  centres,  no  American  papers  can  hold 
exactly  the  same  position  as  the  great  London 
papers.  But  it  is  clearly  the  New  York  papers 
which  come  nearest  to  it ;  the  Washington  papers 
one  looks  on  as  simply  local,  more  local  a  good  deal 
than  those  at  Chicago. 

Now  it  strikes  me  that,  if  the  dominant  life  of 
a  country  is  to  be  its  town  life,  it  is  a  great  gain 
that  there  should  be  many  centres  of  such  life, 
and  not  one  only.  And  in  America  there  is  no 
danger  of  its  being  otherwise.  New  York  certain 
ly  takes  a  great  deal  upon  itself ;  but  the  other 
great  cities  are  quite  able  to  hold  their  own  against 
it.  Neither  old  Boston  nor  new  Chicago  looks  on 
itself  or  on  its  State  as  a  "  province"  of  New  York. 
And  we  must  also  remember  that,  from  one  point 
of  view,  town  life  is,  after  all,  not  dominant  in  the 


218  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

United  States.  It  is  dominant  in  the  point  of  view 
which  chiefly  strikes  such  a  traveller  as  myself. 
He  misses  the  country-houses,  the  manor-houses 
and  parsonages  of  his  own  land  ;  his  friends,  old  or 
new  made,  are  sure  to  be  mainly  in  the  cities.  But 
he  must  not  forget  that,  in  American  political  life, 
the  cities  are  by  no  means  exclusively  dominant. 
If  America  has  few  squires,  she  has  plenty  of  yeo 
men,  and  those  on  a  magnificent  scale.  If  in  one 
way  the  American  cities  count  for  far  more  than  the 
English  cities,  if  from  one  point  of  view  America 
seems  to  be  all  town  and  no  country,  from  another 
point  of  view  the  country  counts  for  far  more  than 
it  does  in  England.  At  any  rate  the  real  voice  of 
its  inhabitants  counts  for  far  more. 

Now  this  predominance  of  town  over  country,  so 
far  as  it  exists,  is  one  of  the  points  in  which 
America  does  not,  as  in  so  many  others,  cleave  to 
an  earlier  form  of  English  life.  There  undoubted 
ly  was  a  time  when  the  old  towns  of  England — as 
distinguished  from  the  great  commercial  centres, 
new  or  of  new  growth — counted  socially  for  more 
than  they  do  now.  And  yet,  when  this  was  so, 
London  itself,  from  some  points  of  view,  also 
counted  for  more  than  it  does  now.  But  there 
never  was,  or  well  could  be,  a  time  when  social  and 
intellectual  life  in  England  had  so  many  centres  as 


COMPARISON   WITH  FRANCE.  219 

it  now  lias  in  America.  Still,  if  America  in  this 
respect  does  not  reproduce  an  older  England,  it  has 
some  likeness  to  the  continent  of  Europe  as  dis 
tinguished  from  England.  Even  in  France,  and  of 
course  far  more  in  Italy,  the  old  local  capitals  still 
hold  a  place  which  we  may  safely  say  that  no  town 
in  England  but  London  ever  held  since  there  was 
any  united  England  at  all.  We  must  remember 
that,  if  Paris  is,  in  many  points,  in  all  the  most 
obvious  points,  far  more  thoroughly  the  centre  of 
France  than  London  is  the  centre  of  England,  there 
are  other  points,  less  obvious  but  not  without  im 
portance,  in  which  it  is  less  so.  For  instance,  we 
might  almost  say  that  no  book  is  published  out  of 
London.  Books  are  still  published  in  the  Universi 
ties,  in  the  Irish  and  Scottish  capitals ;  but  those 
who  publish  them  find  it  needful  at  least  to  have 
London  agencies.  Now  France  is  not  quite  like 
Germany  in  this  matter;  still  good  books  are  pub 
lished  in  other  French  cities  besides  Paris.  It  was 
perhaps  an  exceptional  case  when  I  met  an  intelli 
gent  Norman  gentleman  who  had  never  been  at 
Paris,  who  indeed  had  never  been  out  of  Nor 
mandy  in  his  life.  But  I  could  hardly  fancy  an 
Englishman  in  his  position  who  had  never  been  in 
London.  So  again  I  have  known  foreigners  show  a 
little  amazement  at  hearing  that  it  was  now  an  un- 


220  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

lieard-of  thing  for  an  English  nobleman  or  country 
gentleman  to  have  his  town-house  in  any  town  ex 
cept  London.  I  need  not  say  what  the  use  of  Italy 
is  in  this  matter;  even  in  France,  where  any 
noblesse  is  left,  the  town-house  in  the  old  capital  of 
the  province  is  still  not  uncommon.  Indeed  it 
strikes  one  on  the  continent  that  everybody  likes,  if 
he  can,  to  have  two  dwellings,  to  have  a  town-  and 
a  country-house,  even  if  the  one  be  a  garret  and  the 
other  a  hut.  But  the  town-dwelling  comes  first ; 
town-life  is  the  thing  taken  for  granted.  I  have 
myself  found  German  scholars,  not  less  than  Ameri 
can  scholars,  puzzled  at  my  not  living  in  a  town ; 
they  seemed  unable  to  conceive  any  one  living  in  the 
country  in  any  position  between  the  Junker  and  the 
Bauer.  In  all  this,  if  America  has  departed  from 
the  model  of  England,  she  has  conformed  much 
more  to  the  model  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  It  is 
the  insular  branch  of  the  English  folk  which  is  in 
this  matter  the  peculiar  people. 

The  great  American  cities,  those  which  have 
taken  their  position  as  centres  of  life  for  large  parts 
of  the  country,  contrast  remarkably  with  the 
smaller  towns  and  villages.  In  this  matter,  as  in  so 
many  others,  whatever  in  America  is  not  palpably 
new  is  pretty  sure  to  be  genuinely  old.  A  small 


OLD  AMERICAN  TOWNS.  221 

American   town   or  village — in    some    States    the 
name  "village"    is  the   legal   description   of    what 
we  should    call   a  market-town — one   that  has  not 
grown  with  the   same  speed  as  its  greater  neigh 
bours,  is  apt  to  have  a  very  old-world  air  indeed 
about  it.     I  am  not  speaking  of  new  and  unfinished 
places  in  the  more  lately  settled  States,  some  of 
which  have  a  very  desolate  look.     I  mean  towns 
dating   from   the   earlier   days   of   settlement,  but 
which  have  failed  to  advance  with  their  neighbours, 
even   if   they   have   not   positively  gone   back.     I 
remember  very  well  the  general  effect  of  Bristol  in 
Pennsylvania.     If    the    younger   Boston    and    the 
younger  York  have  greatly  outstripped  their  older 
namesakes,  the   younger   Bristol   has   as   distinctly 
lagged  behind  the  older.     It  had  once,  I  believe,  a 
considerable  trade,  which  is  now  swallowed  up  by 
Philadelphia.     It  stands  on  a  good  site  above  the 
Delaware,  and  it  has  altogether,  as  these  older  towns 
commonly   have,    a    respectable,    comfortable,    and 
thoroughly   old-world   look.     Places   of    this   kind 
have  somewhat  the  same  air  as  those  open  towns  or 
large  villages  which  lie  on  what,  in  the  days  of 
coaches,  was  the  main  road   between  London  and 
Oxford.     I  am  not  sure  that  the  general  impression 
of  belonging  to  a  past  state  of  things  is  not  stronger 
in  the  American  than  in  the  English  places.     This 


222  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

feeling  is  perhaps  strengthened  by  the  contrast 
between  these  old  towns  and  the  extremely  modern 
air  of  the  great  cities.  And  the  constant  use  of 
wood  in  building  houses,  an  use  almost  equally  com 
mon  in  some  parts  of  England,  always  gives  an  air 
of  age.  Let  me  speak  of  another  place  smaller  than 
Bristol,  one  indeed  which  we  should  not  call  a  town 
at  all,  but  a  large  village  of  detached  houses.  This 
is  Farrnington  in  Connecticut.  Here  was  a  truly 
old-world  place,  and  I  was  taken  to  see  the  oldest 
house  in  it.  And  it  was  a  house  which  we  should 
call  old  even  in  England,  a  respectable  wooden  house 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  was  just  what  a  New 
England  house  should  be,  except  that  its  grand  old 
open  fire-place  was  blocked  up  by  some  modern 
device  or  other.  But,  if  the  house  was  thus  satis 
factory,  a  turn  of  disappointment  was  caused  by  the 
discovery  of  the  inhabitants.  Not  that  I  have  any 
thing  to  say  against  them;  I  doubt  not  that  they 
are  respectable  and  excellent  people  in  their  own 
way.  Only  their  way  was  not  the  way  that  I  came 
to  look  for.  I  came  to  see  New  England  Puri 
tans,  and  I  found  Ould  Ireland  Papishes.  And  un 
luckily  the  fate  of  this  house  is  a  typical  one.  It  is  a 
grievous  truth  that  not  a  few  New  England  houses 
are  left  altogether  empty,  while  not  a  few  others 
are  occupied  by  Celtic  strangers.  The  only  comfort 


FARMING  TON.  223 

is   that  New  England  has  gone  westward.     Those 
whom  we  ought  to  find  in  the  old  homes  have  gone, 
like  their  forefathers,  to  win  new  conquests  for  that 
strong  English  folk  which  called  into  being  on  their 
new  soil  institutions  older  than  those  of  the  England 
which  they  left  behind  them.     But  the  immediate 
feeling  at  the  change  which  has  come  over  New 
England  is  a  grievous  one.     I  had  to  seek  my  com 
fort  in  a  lower  range  of  the  animal  world.     It  was 
cheering,  after  going  a  few  yards,  to  fall  in  with 
something  of  so  old-world  an  air  as  a  yoke  of  oxen, 
and  oxen  too  that  seemed  to  have  something  of  a 
Pilgrim-fatherly  cut  about  them.     Indeed  at  such  a 
moment  there  was  a  measure  of   relief  even  in  a 
most  primitive  kind  of  coach  which  took  us  back  to 
the  railroad.     But,  putting  aside  the  intruders,  both 
Farmingtoti  and  Bristol  are    thoroughly  old-world 
places.     It  is  only  by  negative  signs  that  the  really 
modern  date  of    an  American  town  of  this   class 
gradually  comes  out.     The  general  feeling  of  such 
a  place  is  certainly  older  than  that  of  an  ordinary 
English    market-town.     But    then    the    American 
place,  though  everything  about  it  looks  in  a  manner 
old,  contains  nothing  that   can   be  called  ancient. 
The  English   town  or  village,  on  the  other  hand, 
while  a  great  deal  in  it  will  be  much  newer  than 
anything  in  the  American  town,  will  commonly  con- 


224  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

tain  some  objects  which  are  ancient,  and  not  simply 
old.  It  will  commonly  have  a  church,  it  is  not 
unlikely  to  have  one  or  more  houses,  which  carry  us 
back  to  days  far  older  than  the  Pilgrim  Fathers. 
That  is  of  course  supposing  that  the  church  has  not 
been  restored,  or  that  it  has  been  restored  with 
some  degree  of  mercy.  I  have  seen  old-fashioned 
wooden  churches  in  America,  for  whose  details  of 
course  there  was  nothing  to  say,  but  whose  general 
effect  was  a  good  deal  more  venerable  than  that  of 
an  ancient  English  church  on  which  a  modern  archi 
tect  lias  been  let  loose  to  play  his  tricks. 

Of  the  newer  parts  of  the  country  I  saw  but 
little,  and  of  the  rural  parts  of  the  older  States 
not  much  beyond  what  I  saw  in  my  visit  to  a  very 
retired  part  of  Virginia.  Here  at  least  we  were 
"remote  from  cities,"  more  remote  certainly  than 
in  any  part  of  England  that  I  am  used  to.  But 
the  state  of  things  there  is,  I  fancy,  very  different 
from  the  newly  occupied  settlements.  Much  as 
the  land  has  suffered  from  the  civil  war,  a  civiliza 
tion  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  years'  standing  is 
not  altogether  wiped  out.  A  Virginian  farm-house 
differs  a  good  deal  either  from  an  English  coun 
try-house  or  from  a  house  in  New  York;  but 
it  is  possible  to  live  quite  comfortably  in  it.  The 


LIFE  IN  VIRGINIA.  225 

presence  of  an  inferior  race  hinders  much  of  the 
difficulty  and  discomfort  which  is  found  in  the 
younger  parts  of  the  States.  I  heard  of  an  English 
lady  in  Iowa  who  had  to  scrub  her  own  floors; 
there  is  no  such  hard  necessity  in  Virginia.  Life, 
to  the  visitor  at  least,  is  not  exciting ;  there  seems 
to  be  little  society,  and  a  certain  difficulty,  which 
I  never  found  in  any  other  part  of  the  world,  in 
knowing  what  to  do  with  one's  time.  It  is  a  sim 
ple  and  uneventful  way  of  living;  but  the  main 
essentials  of  civilization  are  not  lacking.  It  had 
however  its  disappointments.  For  I  failed  to  seo 
two  things  which  I  had  fully  hoped  to  come  across, 
if  nowhere  else,  yet  at  least  both  in  Virginia  and 
in  Missouri.  I  saw  none  of  the  beautiful  quadroons 
that  I  had  read  of  in  books.  At  every  stage  I  was 
told  that  I  should  see  them  further  south ;  but  I 
suppose  that  I  never  got  far  enough  south  for  the 
purpose.  Still  I  do  not  understand  why  they 
should  not  grow  at  Baltimore  or  St.  Louis,  just  as 
much  as  at  New  Orleans.  I  saw  one  colored  wo 
man  who  was  not  absolutely  ugly,  and  she  was  in 
Connecticut.  I  was  disappointed  too  in  seeing  next 
to  nothing  of  the  fauna  of  the  country.  The 
'coons  and  the  'possums  I  was  told  I  should  see, 
like  the  beautiful  quadroons,  further  south ;  but  I 
never  got  far  enough  south  to  see  them  either.  In 


226   IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

most  parts  of  the  country  I  was  struck,  a  good  deal 
to  my  amazement,  by  that  same  lack  of  living 
beings  which  has  become  usual  in  England  and 
elsewhere  in  Europe.  In  a  visit  reaching  from 
October  to  April  I  could  not  expect  to  see  much  of 
insect  life ;  but  I  did  see  the  famous  "  katydid  "  in 
Rhode  Island,  and  she  seemed,  to  the  unscientific 
eye  at  least,  to  be  a  close  ally  of  the  Italian  grillo. 
In  the  beautiful  Druids  Park  at  Baltimore  I  saw 
the  grey  squirrel  at  liberty  in  the  trees,  and  a 
species  of  deer  distinct  from  any  of  our  three  Bri 
tish  kinds  in  that  state  of  half-freedom  which  be 
longs  to  deer  in  a  park.  But,  as  I  saw  no  'coons  or 
'possums,  I  never  saw  even  the  pretty  little  ground- 
squirrel  with  the  striped  back.  In  Virginia  I  some 
times  saw  in  air  the  wild  turkey  who  was  presently 
to  appear  at  table,  and  I  had  good  opportunities  of 
studying  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  turkey- 
buzzard.  The  turkey-buzzard,  it  should  be  remem 
bered,  has  nothing  to  do  with  a  buzzard,  and  still 
less  with  a  turkey ;  it  is  really  a  small  species  of 
vulture.  Its  power  of  sight  must  be  wonderful. 
It  is  strange  indeed  to  see  the  birds  nocking  to 
gether  from  all  quarters  to  any  spot  where  the  car 
case  is.  There  they  crowd  together  and  enjoy  their 
feast  till  they  are  disturbed — for  they  are  easily 
frightened,  and  fly  off  at  the  approach  of  a  man— 


BIRDS  AND  IXtiKCTS.  227 

or  till  they  are  so  thoroughly  gorged  that  they  can 
not  fly  off.  They  are  so  useful  as  scavengers  that 
the  law  of  the  State  commonly  protects  them.  I 
do  not  know  however  whether  the  turkey-buzzards 
have  anywhere  attained  to  the  same  rights  as  the 
fish-hawks  in  New  Jersey,  who  seem  to  form  a 
privileged  order  among  all  other  animated  creatures. 
There,  if  I  have  not  been  misled,  the  very  tree  on 
which  a  fish-hawk  has  once  made  its  nest  is  sacred. 

In  this  quiet  Virginian  life  I  said  that  the  main 
elements  of  civilization  were  not  lacking.     But  I 
must   make  one  important  exception.     It  is  how 
ever  an  exception  which  has  to  be  made  in  the  case 
of  more  thickly  inhabited  parts  of  America,  and 
even,  in  some  sort,  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  great 
est  cities.    I  mean  the  utter  absence  of  decent  roads. 
In  the  part  of  Virginia  in  which  I  stayed,  you  lite 
rally  see  the   roads,  in  the  words  of  the   famous 
rime,  "  before  they  were  made."     Neither  Lee  nor 
Grant  seems  to  have  thought  it  needful  to  follow  the 
praiseworthy  example  of  Marshal  Wade.    "Walking, 
riding,  driving,  are  all  done  under  difficulties,  over 
roads  which  have  never  been  brought  under  the 
dominion  of  the  art  of  Appius  and  Mac  Adam.   The 
lack  of  good  roads  is  a  general  feature  wherever  I 
have  been.     I  do  not  say  that  I  saw  no  good  roads 


228  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

in  America;  but  good  roads  certainly  are  excep 
tional.  In  many  parts,  as  I  before  remarked,  the 
railroad  has  come  before  the  road.  Even  in  the 
immediate  neighbourhood  of  large  towns,  sometimes 
even  in  the  streets  of  large  towns  themselves,  the 
road  is  often  simply  a  mass  of  mud.  I  do  not  mean 
merely  such  mud  as  in  many  parts  of  England  we 
are  used  to  after  rain  ;  I  mean  thick  abiding  mire, 
abiding  at  least  for  several  months  together.  In 
newly  settled  places  the  street  often  consists  of  a 
miry  way  in  the  middle,  and  a  path  of  planks  on 
each  side.  And  the  path  of  planks  is  often  seen, 
even  where  things  are  in  much  better  order  than 
this.  The  great  cities  vary  greatly  in  this  matter, 
and  New  York  is  certainly  not  the  best.  The  very 
first  thing  that  struck  me  on  the  day  after  landing 
was  the  neglected  and  dirty  state  of  many  of  the 
New  York  streets,  a  state  of  which  an  English 
market-town  would  certainly  be  ashamed.  I  ask 
why  so  great  a  city  is  not  better  looked  after  in 
so  important  a  matter,  and  I  am  told  that  it  is 
owing  to  the  corrupt  administration  of  the  Irish. 
This  may  or  may  not  be  so ;  if  it  be  so,  it  is  surely 
another  argument  against  Irish  ascendency.  I 
was  told  also  that  the  Americans  are  a  long- 
suffering  people,  and  I  partly  believe  it.  The 
tendency  to  stand  still  sometimes  strangely  con- 


ROADS  AND  POST-OFFICES.  229 

trasts  with  the  tendency  to  go  ahead.     Take   for 
instance    the    post-office.       Some   of   its    arrange 
ments   are    not    a   little    behindhand.      It   seems 
wonderful  that,  while  you  may  send  a  packet  of 
manuscript  at  a  low  rate  from  Bagdad  to  California 
—I  was  going  to  say  from  Kamtschatka,  only  then 
it  might  perhaps  go  by  way  of  Alaska — if  the  same 
packet   is   sent   from   one   part   of    the   Union   to 
another,  it  is  charged  the  full  letter  rate.     That  let 
ters  within  the  country,  travelling  as  they  do  for 
distances   so   much   greater    than   ours,  should   be 
charged  somewhat  more  highly,  is  perhaps  not  un 
reasonable  ;  but  they  might  surely  be  allowed  to  be 
a  full  ounce  in  weight,  as  in  England.     Then  again 
there  is  no  place  where  it  is  so  easy  to  post  a  letter 
as  in  an  American  town;  there  are  street-boxes  at 
almost  every  step.     But  to  register  a  letter,  or  to 
go  through  any  of   the  other  branches   of  postal 
business,  often  calls  for  a  long  journey.    I  could  not 
find    out  that  there  was  more  than  one  place  in 
Philadelphia  where  a  letter  could  be  registered.     If 
there  is  more  than  one — in  a  city  greater  than  any 
English   city  except   London— there   certainly  are 
wonderfully  few. 

Another  strange  lack  in  some  of  the  greatest 
American  cities  is  the  want  of  any  good  system  of 
hackney-carriages  at  moderate  fares.  In  this  matter 


230  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

it  is  perfectly  true  that  a  dollar  in  America  goes 
no  further  than  a  franc  in  Europe.  It  would  cer 
tainly  cost  several  dollars  to  go  as  far  in  New  York 
as  you  can  go  in  Rome  for  a  single  lira.  Here  at 
least  England  is  not  singular ;  it  is  a  general  ques 
tion  between  the  old  world  and  the  new.  Simply 
to  get  from  one  part  of  an  American  city  to  another 
is  an  object  for  which  every  provision  is  made,  and 
often  made  in  a  way  which  is  a  triumph  of  enter 
prise  and  ingenuity.  The  cars  climbing  the  in 
clined  plane  at  Cincinnati  are  truly  amazing,  and  in 
the  descent  at  evening  the  view  of  the  city  is  strik 
ing  in  no  slight  degree.  The  upstairs  railway  at 
New  York  is  far  more  pleasant  to  the  stranger  than 
the  underground  railway  in  London  ;  and  I  was  told 
that  those  through  whose  streets  it  goes,  who  might 
have  been  expected  to  dislike  it,  are  reconciled  to 
it  by  its  bringing  them  more  custom.  It  would 
however  be  a  gain  if  both  the  railway-cars  above 
and  the  tram-cars  below  were  hindered  from  taking 
more  passengers  than  they  are  made  to  hold.  And 
neither  the  tram-car  nor  the  upstairs  railway  serves 
the  exact  purpose  of  taking  you  to  a  particular 
house,  say,  in  the  case  which  American  hospitality 
makes  a  very  common  one,  that  of  being  asked  out 
to  dinner.  Then  you  must  either  walk  all  the  way 
or  part  of  the  way,  often  at  the  risk  of  some  mud, 


AMERICAN  TRAVELLING.  231 

or  else  you  must  take  a  hired  carriage  at  what  to  an 
European  seems  an  unreasonable  cost.  At  New 
York  I  was  told  that  the  Irish  were  at  the  bottom 
of  this  also,  as  of  most  other  things  which  either 
natives  or  strangers  complain  of.  But  why  should 
transplanted  Englishmen,  or  transplanted  Dutchmen 
either,  bow  down  their  necks  to  this  Irish  bondage  ? 

XIY. 

The  railroad-  and  the  tram-car  in  the  cities  sug 
gest  the  wider  use  of  the  railroad  in  general  Ameri 
can  travelling.  The  traveller  is  soon  made  to  feel 
the  vastness  of  the  country  by  the  familiar  way  in 
which  he  hears  people  speak,  and  in  which  he  pre 
sently  comes  to  speak  himself,  of  distances  which  in 
Europe  are  quite  exceptional.  Three  or  four  hun 
dred  miles  go  for  nothing.  During  an  adjournment 
of  two  or  three  days  in  the  State  Legislature  of 
New  York,  members  were  running  off  to  Buffalo 
and  back,  as  if  it  had  been  something  like  going 
from  London  to  Heading.  To  go  from  New  York 
to  San  Francisco  is  talked  of  as  if  it  were  no 
greater  matter  than  to  go  from  London  to  Inver 
ness.  I  know  not  whether  I  ought  to  tell  how  one 
gentleman  did  me  the  honour  to  come  all  the  way 
from  Mobile  to  St.  Louis,  a  distance  about  as  far  as 
the  whole  length  of  Great  Britain,  merely  to  make 


232  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

my  acquaintance.  I  felt  abashed,  as  I  had  certainly 
never  taken  such  a  journey  to  meet  any  continental 
or  American  scholar.  And  this  feature  of  Ameri 
can  life  cleaves  to  the  traveller  when  he  comes  to 
home ;  at  least  Carlisle  no  longer  seems  to  me  the 
distant  spot  which  it  did  even  a  year  ago.  To  my 
own  mind,  what  was  chiefly  brought  home  by  this 
light  handling  of  distances  was,  not  the  vastness  of 
the  whole  country,  for  which  I  was  prepared,  but 
the  vastness  of  many  of  the  States.  I  have  not 
tried  Texas,  which  is  said  to  be  about  the  same  size 
as  the  whole  dominions  of  the  King  of  Hungary 
and  Archduke  of  Austria;  but  New  York  among 
old  States  and  Illinois  among  new  fill  a  pretty  con 
siderable  space  on  the  map.  Now  in  England  we 
instinctively  fancy  that  a  State  answers  to  an  Eng 
lish  county  or  a  French  department.  And  for 
some  purposes  it  does.  I  had  to  maintain  that  pro 
position  against  an  American  author  who  thought 
me  unreasonable  for  complaining  that  his  country, 
men  did  not  know  the  English  counties.  No  one  in 
England,  he  said,  knew  the  counties  in  an  American 
State  ;  no  one  in  America  knew  the  counties  in  any 
State  but  his  own  ;  very  often  a  man  did  not  know  the 
counties  in  his  own  State ;  sometimes  he  hardly  knew 
the  county  in  which  he  lived  himself.  I  ventured, 
with  my  small  American  experience,  to  traverse  his 


SIZE  OF  THE  STATES.  233 

fact.     I  could  believe  that  in  New  England  a  man 
might  not  know  the  county  of  his  neighbour,  that  he 
possibly  might  not  know  his  own  ;  but  I  told  him 
that   in  Virginia   people   knew   their   counties   as 
naturally  as  they  do  in  England.     But  I  argued 
that,  as  regarded  people  in  one  country  knowing 
the  geographical  divisions  of  the   other,  to  know 
the  county  in  England  answered  to  knowing  the 
State  in  America.     The  county  in  the  one  case,  the 
State  in  the  other,  is  the  highest  geographical  divi 
sion ;    it  is  that  which  stands  out  visibly  on  the 
map;  it  is  that  which  a  man  names  when  he   is 
asked  in  what  part  of  the  country  he  lives.     Ask 
the  inhabitant  of  England  where  he  lives,  and  he 
names  his   county.       Ask   the   inhabitant   of   the 
United  States  where  he  lives,   and  he   names  his 
State.     I  know  one  exception,  but  it  is  one  that 
proves  the  rule.     Many  years  ago  I  was  sitting  at 
dinner  in  Oxford  next  to  an  Episcopal  clergyman 
from  America.     He  talked  to  me  freely  on  secular 
politics,  and  the  word  "  State"  often  came  into  o  ir 
discourse.     Presently  our  conversation  was  broken 
in  on  by  another  guest  asking  my  neighbour  from 
what  part   of  the  United   States  he  came.     I  saw 
how  in  a  moment  he  took  the  measure  of  his  ques 
tioner:  he  marked  a  clerical  coat,  waistcoat,  and 
tie ;  his  voice  and  look  became  quite  different  from 


234  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

what  they  had  been  while  engaged  in  worldly  talk 
with  me,  and  he  answered  that  he  came  from  the 
diocese  of  New  York.  But  1  conceive  that,  in 
speaking  to  any  one  in  a  lay  garb,  even  this  canny 
divine  would  have  defined  his  dwelling-place  by  his 
State.  In  a  purely  geographical  aspect  then  the 
American  State  does  answer  to  the  English  county ; 
the  wide  difference  in  the  political  position  of  the 
two  is  of  no  importance  when  wre  are  simply  map 
ping  out  the  surface  of  the  land.  To  know  an 
American  county  answers  rather  to  knowing  Eng 
lish  poor-law  unions  or  petty-sessional  divisions, 
which  no  one  out  of  their  immediate  neighbour 
hood  can  be  expected  to  do. 

But  if  the  English  county  does,  for  simple  geo 
graphical  purposes,  answer  to  the  American  State, 
American  travelling  soon  brings  home  to  us  how 
very  different  a  thing  in  point  of  extent  an  Ameri 
can  State  is  from  an  English  county.  Without 
going  off  into  the  wilds,  a  journey  through  such 
States  as  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  does  indeed 
impress  us  with  a  feeling  of  the  vastness  of  those 
commonwealths.  Still  there  is  another  way  of 
looking  at  the  matter.  Shallow  people  laugh  at 
small  commonwealths,  whether  in  old  Greece  or  in 
modern  Switzerland.  And  I  have  known  New 
York  papers  laugh  at  Delaware ;  I  know  not 


EFFECT  OF  MODERN  INVENTIONS.        235 

whether  any  one,  even  in  New  York,  is  so  hardy 
as  to  laugh  at  Ehode  Island,  where  the  spirit  of 
Koger  Williams   still    abides    in    the   very   dogs. 
Shallow  people  ask  what  instruction  there  can  be 
in  the  past  history  or  present  politics  of  common 
wealths  so  small  as  those  of  Greece  or  Switzerland; 
above  all,  they  ask  what  can  be  learned  from  com 
monwealths  which  had  no  printing,  no  railroads,  no 
electric    telegraphs.      The    political    thinker  will 
rather  hold  that  the  small  commonwealth,  with  its 
stronger  and  fuller  flow  of  life,  is  more  native,  more 
typical,  and  therefore   richer   in   real   instruction, 
than  the  large  state   ever  can  be.     He  will   hold 
that  the  political  advantage  of  modern  inventions  is 
that  they  go  far  to  raise  the  large  state  to  the  level 
of  the  small  one.     No  modern  community  can  ever 
be  like  the  Athenian  democracy ;    but  the  inven 
tions  of  modern  skill,  the  printing-press,  the   rail 
road,   the   telegraph,  by   the   improved  means   of 
communication  which  they  give,  go  far  to  enable  a 
large  state  to  get  over  the  disadvantage  of  its  size, 
and  to  put  its  citizens  somewhat  more  nearly  in  the 
position   of  the  men  who  hearkened  to  Perikles. 
We  may  be  quite  certain  that,  without  these  modern 
inventions,  so  vast  a  Confederation  as  the  United 
States  could  not  be  kept  together ;  with  them,  its 
members  are  practically  brought  as  near  to  one  an- 


236  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

other  as  were  the  cities  of  old  Achaia.  To  travel 
in  the  United  States,  to  communicate  with  ease 
with  every  part  of  its  vast  area,  and  indeed  with 
lands  beyond  the  Ocean,  brings  forcibly  to  the  mind 
how  our  world  has  grown  in  physical  size  since  the 
days  of  old  Greece,  and  also  how  modern  skill  has 
equalized  the  physically  great  and  the  physically 
small.  The  most  startling  thing  in  the  way  of 
communication  that  I  ever  saw  was  when  the 
President's  message  appeared  in  the  New  York 
papers  accompanied  by  the  comments  which  had 
been  already  made  on  it  by  the  London  papers. 
The  difference  of  time  between  England  and  Ame 
rica  allows  this  to  be  done  easily ;.  and  it  may  com 
fort  us  of  the  old  world  with  the  thought  that 
there  is  after  all  some  advantage  in  living  nearer  to 
the  rising  of  the  sun. 

But  I  have  been  carried  off  from  the  imme 
diate  subject  of  American  travelling.  I  need 
hardly  dwell  on  the  various  small  peculiarities  by 
which  it  is  distinguished  from  European  travelling. 
I  have  already  hinted  that  some  of  the  peculiari 
ties  of  the  American  railroad-car  will  not  be  new 
to  any  one  who  has  travelled  in  Switzerland,  and 
that  some  of  them  are  finding  their  way  into  the 
railroads  of  our  own  isla-nd.  Two  reforms  I 
might  suggest ;  a  better  supply  of  porters,  es- 


RAILWAYS  AND  HOTELS.  237 

pecially  at  the  smaller  stations,  and  the  getting 
rid  of  the  men  and  boys  who  are  allowed  to  go  up 
and  down  the  cars  with  books  and  fruit,  who 
leave  you  hardly  a  quiet  moment,  and  who  almost 
hurl  the  last  new  magazine  at  your  head.  But 
against  my  fellow-passengers  I  have  nothing  to 
say  on  any  of  my  journeys.  I  have  never  been 
hailed  as  "  stranger" ;  I  have  never,  on  land  at 
least,  fallen  in  with  the  pushing,  questioning,  fel 
low-traveller,  a  dim  tradition  of  whom  we  are  apt 
to  take  out  with  us.  As  for  the  American  hotel, 
it  is  not  an  inn,  but  an  institution.  No  one  really 
knows  how  to  keep  an  inn  so  well  as  a  French 
woman,  a  Frenchwoman  in  a  steady-going  old 
French  town  uncorrupted  by  tourists.  To  her  you 
stand  in  a  very  different  relation  from  that  in 
which  you  stand  to  an  American  "  hotel-clerk." 
But  let  us  do  justice  to  the  hotel-clerk,  as  to  all 
other  men.  The  relation  in  which  you  stand  to  the 
French  landlady  is  a  domestic  relation ;  that  in 
which  you  stand  to  the  American  hotel-clerk  is  a 
political  relation.  To  the  one  you  are  a  guest, 
though  a  guest  that  pays ;  to  the  other  you  are,  I 
will  not  venture  to  say  a  fellow-citizen,  but  at  least 
a  protected  subject.  No  one  in  the  world  teaches 
you  your  place  so  well  as  the  American  hotel-clerk. 
For  my  own  part,  I  have  little  or  nothing  to  com- 


238  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

plain  of  on  the  score  of  mere  civility.  But  the 
civility  of  the  hotel-clerk  is  a  stately  and  lordly 
civility,  such  as  one  might  conceive  a  well-disposed 
Czar  or  Sultan  showing  to  the  meaner  class  of  his 
subjects.  But  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  any 
thing  distinctively  American  in  all  this,  though  it 
is  thrust  more  strongly  on  our  notice  in  America 
than  elsewhere.  It  is  the  natural  consequence  of 
changing  the  hotel — a  word  which  in  itself  is  simply 
French  for  the  English  "  inn" — from  a  house  into 
an  institution.  Wherever  this  change  has  taken 
place,  whether  in  America,  in  continental  Europe, 
or  in  our  own  island,  the  same  results  follow.  In 
stead  of  being  looked  after  by  the  landlord  or  land 
lady  as  personal  human  beings,  we  find  ourselves 
units  in  a  body  politic,  protected  or  oppressed  by 
the  rulers  of  that  body  politic. 

But  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  hotel  system  has 
found  a  greater  developement  in  America  than  it 
has  in  any  part  of  Europe  save  those  which  are 
infested  by  tourists.  The  thing  which  seems 
strange  to  the  British  traveller  is  the  way  in  which 
American  hotels  are  thronged  by  those  who  are 
not  travellers.  What  is  the  meaning  of  that  cease 
less  crowd  which  seems  to  choose  the  ground-floor 
of  the  hotel  to  do  everything,  to  read,  to  write,  to 
talk,  to  do  all  those  things  which,  one  would  think, 


HOTEL   LIFE.  239 

might  be  more  comfortably  done  at  home  ?  Loung 
ing  quietly  in  a  southern  cafe,  above  all  by  an 
Italian  lake,  undoubtedly  has  its  charms ;  but  what 
can  be  the  charm  of  a  place  where  everybody  is 
pushing  to  and  fro,  like  the  crowd  at  an  election, 
only  without  anybody  to  elect?  The  "Ladies' 
Entrance"  no  longer  seems  puzzling ;  it  becomes 
the  natural  way  for  quiet  people  of  either  sex. 
Only  it  is  a  pity  if  it  has  suggested  the  special 
"Ladies'  Box"  at  the  post-office,  to  which  the  un 
tutored  Englishwoman,  expecting  to  find  her  own 
and  her  husband's  letters  lying  in  close  conjugal 
neighbourhood,  does  not  think  of  going  till  the 
mystery  is  explained  after  many  days.  I  never  got 
quite  to  the  bottom  of  these  sources  of  puzzledom, 
any  more  than  I  could  understand  why  many  peo 
ple  in  America  really  choose  to  live  in  hotels.  But 
perhaps  it  is  a  natural  developement  of  the  predomi 
nant  tendency  to  town  life.  "  I  wonder  what  they 
can  find,"  says  Hobbie  Elliot,  "to  do  among  a 
wheen  ranks  o'  stane-houses  wi'  slate  on  the  tap  o' 
them,  that  might  live  on  their  ain  bonny  green 
hills."  When  a  man  who  might  live  among  his 
own  fields  chooses  rather  to  live  in  a  street,  it  is 
only  going  a  step  further  to  live  in  an  hotel  rather 
than  in  a  house  of  his  own. 


240  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

But  the  -hotel  and  the  railroad  are  only  the 
means  of  travelling.  The  object  of  travelling  is 
to  visit  this  place  and  that,  for  whatever  may  be 
the  purposes  of  the  particular  traveller.  Now  in 
American  travelling  there  is  much  that  is  pleasing 
and  instructive ;  but  the  chief  charm  of  European 
travelling  is  not  there.  There  is  something  very 
strange  in  going  through  a  vast  land  in  which 
there  is  not  one  ancient  building,  where  no  histori 
cal  association  can  be  anything  like  three  hundred 
years  old,  where  the  chief  historical  associations 
are  only  one  hundred  years  old.  To  be  sure,  you 
may  here  and  there  be  shown  a  primaeval  monu 
ment,  at  whose  date  or  at  the  race  of  whose 
builders  you  do  not  venture  even  to  guess.  But 
here  extremes  meet;  a  monument  so  old  or  so 
strange  as  to  have  no  meaning  teaches  nothing. 
A  work  of  an  altogether  unknown  folk  cannot  rank 
with  the  stones  of  Tiryns  and  Cora.  In  central 
America  indeed  we  used  to  hear  of  monuments 
which  did  teach  something,  buildings  which  might 
help,  along  with  Tiryns,  with  Tusculum,  and  with 
Signia,  to  throw  light  on  the  great  invention  of 
the  arch.  And  in  the  Smithsonian  Museum  at 
Washington  I  was  shown  an  inscription  which  I 
certainly  could  not  read,  and  which  I  was  told  that 
nobody  else  could  read  either.  This  at  least  raises 


LACK  OF  ANTIQUITIES  241 

curiosity ;  some  day  some  one  may  be  able  to  read 
it,  and  then  something  may  be  learned  from  it.  But 
that,  as  a  whole,  the  United  States  are  a  land 
lacking  in  antiquities  hardly  needs  to  be  proved. 
In  this,  above  all  things,  newness  proclaims  itself 
on  the  surface.  It  seems  strange  to  pass  on  for  a 
whole  day,  from  town  to  town,  without  a  glimpse 
of  a  single  ancient  work  of  any  kind.  And  the 
newness  of  the  land  forces  itself  on  the  traveller 
in  another  way  at  which  I  have  at  once  glanced 
for  a  moment.  There  is  so  little  between  town 
and  town.  In  one  sense,  to  be  sure,  there  is  a 
great  deal :  there  is,  for  instance,  the  corn  land  of 
Illinois.  But  there  is  nothing  like  those  unbroken 
signs  of  old  habitation  which  show  themselves  at 
every  step  as  we  pass  through  most  parts  of  Eng 
land  and  of  many  other  lands.  The  old-established 
village,  the  ancient  church,  the  inhabited  manor, 
the  shattered  castle,  the  monastic  ruin,  all  the 
things  that  make  up  the  outward  history  of  an  old 
country,  all  are  lacking.  The  patriotic  American 
will  perhaps  answer  that  his  country  is  all  the  bet 
ter  from  never  having  known  some  of  these  things ; 
and,  as  far  as  the  castles  go,  I  shall  certainly  not 
dispute  against  him.  But  I  am  not  speaking  of  the 
past  or  present  welfare  of  the  land,  but  of  the  look 
of  the  land  in  the  eyes  of  the  traveller  who  passes 


242  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

through  it.  As  I  before  said,  we  adapt  our  stan 
dard  of  antiquity  to  circumstances,  and  we  may,  by 
an  effort,  reach  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  the 
mill  at  Newport,  even  without  turning  it  into  a 
wiking's  tower,  becomes  as  Silchester  or  as  Norba. 
Nor  is  it  only  the  lack  of  signs  of  ancient  occupa 
tion  that  strikes  us.  The  whole  land,  even  in  some 
of  the  older  States,  has  an  unfinished  look;  it  is 
not  thoroughly  filled  up ;.  it  is  still  in  making ;  the 
charred  roots  of  the  burned  trees  are  of  themselves 
witness  enough.  In  all  these  ways  the  newness  of 
the  land  makes  itself  known  as  we  pass  through  it. 
That  there  are  old  elements  in  the  land  also  we  shall 
find  out  if  we  seek  for  them  ;  but  we  have  to  seek 
for  them. 

I  sometimes  stopped  to  think  how  strange, 
looked  at  from  an  European  standard,  must  be 
the  state  of  mind  of  an  intelligent  and  well-read 
man,  who  has  used  books  and  museums  to  good 
purpose,  but  who  never  saw  an  ancient  building, 
who  never  saw  an  ancient  object  of  any  kind  in 
its  own  place.  No  European  can  be  in  this  case. 
If  he  has  seen  only  the  objects  of  his  own  country, 
he  has  at  least  made  a  start;  he  has  qualified 
himself  to  compare  the  objects  of  his  own  land 
with  those  of  other  lands ;  he  is  like  a  man  who 
has  learned  one  alphabet,  and  has  thereby  qualified 


THE  AMERICAN  IN  EUROPE.  343 

himself  to  learn  others.  But  we  need  not  feel 
any  pity  for  onr  friend  who  has  read  and  not  seen. 
In  one  point  he  has  the  advantage  over  us.  We, 
who  have  been  used  to  ancient  objects  of  some 
kind  from  our  childhood,  can  never  feel  anything 
like  that  opening  of  a  new  world  which  must 
come  npori  snch  a  man  as  I  have  supposed  when 
he  first  sees  an  ancient  work  of  any  kind.  We  can 
never  taste  the  feeling.  The  first  sight  of  a  Greek 
temple  is  thrilling  ;  but  we  have  been  in  a  manner 
led  up  to  it  by  the  buildings  of  other  lands.  The 
first  sight  of  Rome  is  thrilling ;  but  we  have  been 
in  a  manner  led  up  to  it  by  Eboracum  and  Lindum, 
by  Vienna  and  Arelate,  by  Augusta  Treverorum 
and  Colonia  Agrippina.  But  to  the  traveller  from 
the  New  World  all  is  fresh.  One  is  sometimes 
inclined  to  regret  that  so  many  American  travellers 
get  their  first  glimpse  of  anything  ancient  in  so 
comparatively  poor  a  minster  as  Saint  Werburh's 
at  Chester.  But  it  is  perhaps  as  well  that  Ely 
or  Saint  Ouen's  should  not  come  first ;  and,  if  they 
really  spell  out  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  City 
of  the  Legions,  if  they  do  not  simply  look  at  its 
head  church  and  its  rows,  they  have  found  no  bad 
introduction  either  to  the  Eoman  or  to  the  Teutonic 
world.  My  American  friends  who  have  seen  Eu 
rope  may  be  able  to  enter  into  my  feelings  when  I 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

tell  them  that,  notwithstanding  all  that  they  and 
their  land  had  supplied  to  win  my  regard,  yet 
before  I  left  it,  I  not  only  began  to  feel  a  wish  for 
my  own  home,  but  also  to  feel  a  more  general 
yearning  to  be  in  any  land,  England,  Italy,  or  any 
other,  where  there  was  something  old.  It  seemed 
not  to  matter  whether  the  old  thing  was  a  Cyclo 
pean  wall  or  a  Perpendicular  church-tower ;  any 
thing  that  was  not  of  yesterday,  anything  that  had 
a  history,  would  fill  up  the  blank. 

Here  then  is  the  painful  gap  in  American  travel 
ling.  Still  the  lack  of  antiquity  does  not  become 
painful  till  we  have  got  pretty  well  used  to  the 
country.  For  a  while  the  very  lack  has  somewhat 
of  the  charm  of  strangeness.  And  if  there  are  no 
old  objects,  there  are  plenty  of  striking  new  objects, 
some  which  are  really  worthy  of  study.  The  posi 
tion  and  look  of  some  of  the  American  cities  is  very 
striking  and  stately.  Cleveland  by  its  lake,  Cincin 
nati  with  the  hills  above  its  great  river,  St.  Louis 
rising  above  its  yet  greater  river,  would  hold  no 
small  place  among  the  cities  of  the  elder  world. 
So  would  the  federal  capital  as  seen  from  the  Poto 
mac,  if  only  the  hideous  unfinished  monument 
could  be  got  rid  of.  The  "  magnificent  distances" 
are  filling  up,  and  Washington,  with  the  home  of 


AMERICAN  CITIES.  245 

the  Union  ending  the  long  avenue  with  its  mighty 
cupola,  is  becoming  no  contemptible  modern  capi 
tal.     And  it  fills  one  with  simple  amazement  to  see 
the   way  in   which   a   vast   and   stately  town  like 
Chicago  has   risen  from  its  ashes.     In  that  great 
city  I  could  see  or  hear  of  nothing  older  than  the 
fire,  save  a  church-tower  which  showed  the  marks 
of  fire  at  its  angles,  and  a  single  detached  wooden 
house  of  an  antiquated  type.     This  last  suggested 
that  Chicago  before  the  fire  was  something  widely 
different  from  Chicago  after  it.     Philadelphia  on  its 
peninsula,  though  the  peninsular  site  does  not  come 
out  quite  like  Bern  or  Besancon,  affords  some  good 
points  of  view.     But  on  the  whole  the  American 
city  which   struck  me  most  was  Albany.     Rising 
grandly  as  it  does  on  both  sides  of  the  noble  Hud 
son,  it  suggested  some  of  the  ancient  cities  on  the 
Loire.     It  has  the  advantage,  rather  rare  in  Ameri 
can  cities  but  shared  with  Albany  by  the  federal 
capital,   of  having   one   dominant   building.      The 
general  look  of  the  city  carried  me  so  completely 
into  another  part  of  the  world  that,  if  any  one  had 
come  up  and  told  me  in  French,  old  or  new,  that 
the  new  capitol  was  "  le  chateau  de  Monseigneur  le 
due  d'Albanie,"  I  could  almost  have  believed  him. 
This    State    capitol    at    Albany  —  why  cannot    it 
have  a  more  rational  name,  like  the  State-house  at 


246  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Boston  ? — finally  settled,  for  me  at  least,  a  question 
which  I  had  been  turning  over  in  my  mind  ever 
since  I  landed  in  America.  This  was,  "What  ought 
to  be  the  architecture  of  the  United  States  ?  That 
is  to  say,  What  should  be  the  architecture  of  an 
English  people  settled  in  a  country  lying  in  the 
latitude,  though  not  always  in  the  climate,  of  Italy? 
Should  it  be  the  Gothic  of  England  or  the  Roman 
esque  of  Italy  ?  There  seemed  much  to  be  said  on 
either  side  ;  my  own  mind  was  finally  fixed  by  the 
teaching  of  experience,  by  seeing  which  style 
really  flourished  best  on  American  soil.  I  found 
the  modern  churches,  of  various  denominations,  cer 
tainly  better,  as  works  of  architecture,  than  I  had 
expected.  They  may  quite  stand  beside  the  average 
of  modern  churches  in  England,  setting  aside  a 
few  of  the  very  best.  All  persuasions  have  a  great 
love  of  spires,  and,  if  the  details  are  not  always 
what  one  could  wish,  the  general  effect  of  the 
spires  is  often  very  stately,  and  they  help  largely 
towards  the  general  appearance  of  the  cities  in  a 
distant  view.  But  I  thought  the  churches,  whose 
style  is  most  commonly  Gothic  of  one  kind  or 
another,  decidedly  less  successful  than  some  of  the 
civil  buildings.  In  some  of  these,  I  hardly  know 
how  far  by  choice,  how  far  by  happy  accident,  a 
style  has  been  hit  upon  which  seemed  to  me  far 


AMERICAN  ARCHITECTURE.  247 

more   at   home  than  any  of  the  reproductions   of 
Gothic.     Much  of  the  street  architecture  of  several 
cities  has  very  successfully  caught  the  leading  idea 
of  the   true   Italian    style,  the  style    of   Pisa   and 
Lucca,  the   style   of   the   simple   round   arch   and 
column,  uncorrupted   by  the  vagaries  either  of  the 
Italian  sham  Gothic  or  of  the  so-called  Renaissance. 
In  a  large  part  of  the  Broadway  of  New  York  the 
main  lines  of  this  style— I  speak  only  of  the  main 
lines,  without  committing  myself  either  to  details 
or  to  material— are  very  happily  reproduced.     The 
general  effect  of  many  parts  of   that   long  street 
struck  me  as  just  what  the  main  street  of  a  great 
commercial  city  ought  to  he.     And  there  are  some 
buildings  of   the  same   kind   in   Chestnut   Street, 
Philadelphia,   though    there    they    alternate   with 
other   buildings   of    a   very   strange    kind,    whose 
odd  fancies  make  us  turn  back  to  look  with  real 
satisfaction  on  the  honest   brick  of  Independence 
Hall.     Some  of  the  banks  especially  seem  to  have 
thought  that  the  stumpier  they  made  their  columns 
the  safer  would  be  their  deposits.     But  it  was  the 
capitol  at  Albany  which  fully  convinced  me  that 
the  true  style  for  America  was  the  style  of  Pisa  and 
Lucca.      The   building  has  a  most  successful   out 
line  ;  in  its  details  it  is  a  strange  mixture  of  styles, 
not  so  much  confounded  together  as  used  side  by 


248  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

side.  This  is  accounted  for  by  the  history  of  the 
building,  and  by  the  employment  of  more  than  one 
architect.  But  the  visitor  is  concerned  only  with 
the  result.  There  are  parts  which  I  cannot  at  all 
admire ;  but  there  are  other  parts,  those  in  which 
the  column  and  round  arch  are  employed,  which 
certainly  pleased  me  as  much  as  any  modern  build 
ing  that  I  have  seen  for  a  long  time.  When  I 
say  that  the  arches  of  the  senate- chamber  seemed 
to  me,  as  far  as  their  general  conception  goes, 
worthy  to  stand  at  Ragusa,  some  will  understand 
that  I  can  say  no  more. 

I  am  almost  afraid  to  add  that  I  thought  that 
some  parts  of  the  City  Hall  at  New  York,  or  more 
strictly  of  the  adjoining  court-house,  were  entitled 
to  some  measure  of  the  same  praise.  For  I  found 
it  hardly  safe  to  speak  of  that  range  of  buildings. 
Its  name  at  once  drew  forth  bursts  of  indignation 
at  the  millions  of  dollars  which  certain  persons  had 
contrived  to  gain  for  themselves  out  of  its  making. 
Politically  I  felt  abashed,  as  if  I  had  somehow 
become  a  champion -of  corruption.  Still  I  could 
not  help  thinking  that  the  columns  and  arches,  of 
which  alone  I  was  speaking,  were  as  guiltless  of 
any  offence  as  Sir  Thomas  More's  beard.  So,  to 
come  back  to  the  capitol  at  Albany,  I  ventured  to 
make  the  very  smallest  kind  of  artistic  criticism  on 


HOPE  OF  A  NATIONAL  STYLE.  249 

some  chandeliers  in  the  corridors  which  seemed  to 
me  too  big,  as  hiding  some  of  the  architectural 
features.  My  remark  did  not  call  forth  any  artis 
tic  defence  of  the  chandeliers;  but  I  was  much 
struck  at  the  remark  which  it  did  call  forth.  Some 
one  or  other,  I  was  answered,  must  have  had  some 
corrupt  object  in  making  them  too  big.  It  is  cer 
tainly  odd  that  one  cannot  make  the  most  purely 
artistic  criticism,  either  for  or  against  anything, 
without  calling  up  thoughts  which  have  very  lit 
tle  to  do  with  artistic  matters.  Certainly  I  should 
be  sorry  to  think  that  the  architectural  forms  of 
which  1  speak  carry  with  them  any  necessary  taint 
of  political  corruption.  For  in  these  round-arched 
buildings  I  see  a  good  hope  for  a  really  national 
American  style.  The  thing  seems  to  have  come 
of  itself ;  and  the  prospect  is  all  the  more  hopeful 
if  it  has.  I  should  be  better  pleased  to  think  that 
the  forms  which  pleased  me  when  my  eyes  were 
fresh  from  Eagusa  and  Spalato  were  the  work  of 
men  who  had  no  thought  of  Ragusa  or  Spalato  be 
fore  their  eyes. 

This  constant  talk  about  local  corruption,  of 
which  one  certainly  hears  more  at  New  York  than 
anywhere  else,  put  a  very  revolutionary  thought 
into  my  head.  If  New  York  City  really  is  all  that 


250  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

many  of  its  own  inhabitants  tell  us  that  it  is, 
would  it  not  be  a  good  thing  to  carry  out  a 
divorce  between  New  York  City  and  New  York 
State  ?  A  glance  at  the  map  will  show  how  very 
little  geographical  connexion  there  is  between  the 
two.  In  several  of  the  Eastern  States,  the  greatest 
town  stands,  owing  to  the  circumstances  of  the  ori 
ginal  settlement,  in  a  corner  of  the  State,  cut  off 
from  its  main  body ;  it  has  therefore  been  found 
to  be  unfit  to  be  the  centre  and  capital  of  the 
State.  All  this  is  pre-eminently  true  of  New 
York.  With  its  appendage  of  Long  Island,  it 
lies  geographically  apart  from  the  body  of  the 
State  ;  Buffalo  and  Rochester  seem  to  stand  almost 
in  another  world.  Yet  New  York  is  the  greatest 
city,  not  only  of  the  State,  but  of  the  Union ;  its 
population  is  far  larger  than  that  of  many,  perhaps 
most,  of  the  States.  For  such  a  city  not  to  be  in 
any  sense  a  capital,  not  to  be  the  head  of  anything, 
seems  unnatural;  it  might  conceivably  be  danger 
ous.  Why  should  not  such  a  city  become  a  sepa 
rate  State  of  itself  ?  The  separation  would  seem  a 
gain  from  every  point  of  view.  The  great  island 
city  seems  to  have  nothing  whatever  in  common 
with  the  great  inland  region  which  bears  its  name. 
So  great  a  city  seems  marked  out  in  every  way 
for  a  separate  being,  almost  more  than  any  free 


POSITION  OF    NEW  YORK  251 

city,  past  or  present,  of  the  old  world.  And  if  it 
be  so  politically  corrupt  as  it  sometimes  calls  it 
self,  so  thoroughly  given  over  to  the  rule  of  bosses, 
the  inland  region  would  surely  be  all  the  better  for 
parting  company.  Baselland  and  Baselstadt  are 
parted;  let  the  same  thing  be  done  on  a  greater 
scale  with  New  York-land  and  New  Yoi'k-stadt. 
But  there  would  be  no  need  to  bring  down  either 
to  the  rank  of  a  "half-canton."  Each  would  be 
a  State;  each  would  rank  among  the  greatest 
States ;  each  would  have  its  two  senators  and  as 
many  representatives  as  its  amount  of  population 
would  give  it.  New  York  would  thus  stand  out 
as  the  greatest  of  free  cities,  while  one  may  venture 
to  think  that  things  at  Albany  would  be  a  good 
deal  improved.  And,  if  such  a  division  were  car 
ried  out,  should  not  Long  Island  go  to  Connecticut, 
to  which  it  seems  to  belong  geographically,  and 
which  has  ancient  claims  upon  it  ? 


XY. 

I  will  wind  up  with  a  word  or  two  as  to  the 
American  newspapers.  In  one  sense  there  is 
nothing  more  truly  characteristic  of  the  country. 
That  is  to  say,  the  American  newspaper  is  some 
thing  which  stands  by  itself  and  has  nothing  in 


252  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Europe  at  all  like  it.  In  another  sense  there  is 
no  country  where  the  newspapers  are  less  charac 
teristic.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  no  country  which 
it  would  be  more  unfair  to  judge  of  by  its  news 
papers.  The  American  newspaper  represents  a 
level  of  American  life  lower  than  the  level  of 
English  life  which  is  represented  by  the  English 
newspaper.  By  newspapers  I  mean  more  parti 
cularly  the  higher  class  of  daily  papers,  as  dis 
tinguished  both  from  daily  papers  of  a  lower 
class,  and  from  weekly  papers,  which  approach 
more  to  the  nature  of  reviews.  Several  of  these 
last  come,  both  in  appearance  and  matter,  very 
much  nearer  to  English  papers  of  the  same  class 
than  any  daily  American  paper  does  to  the  best 
English  daily  papers.  The  "  Nation"  of  New  York, 
for  instance,  would  take  a  high  place  in  periodical 
literature  anywhere.  There  are  of  course  inferior 
weekly  papers  in  America,  just  as  there  are  in  Eng 
land  ;  my  point  is  that  there  is  no  daily  paper  in 
America  at  all  on  a  level  with  the  best  American 
weekly  papers.  Of  the  American  daily  papers  one 
may  fairly  say  that  the  very  best  do  not  come  so 
near  to  representing  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
the  best  class  of  Americans  as  the  best  English 
newspapers  come  to  representing  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  the  best  class  of  Englishmen.  The  gap, 


AMERICAN  NEWSPAPERS.  253 

I  am  afraid,  is  rather  wide  in  either  case ;  but  it  is 
certainly  much  wider  in  the  American  case.     Even 
the  foremost  English  papers  make  not  a  few  dis 
plays  of  silliness  and   ignorance;   it  would   some 
times  not  be  hard  to  charge  them  with  the  graver 
faults  of  lack  of  principle  and  consistency.     But  in 
one  sense  they  keep  up  a  very  high  standard  in 
deed  ;  we  hardly  know  how  high  that  standard  is 
till  we  compare  them  with  newspapers  elsewhere. 
The  higher  class  of  English  papers  are  most  honour 
ably  free  from  vulgar   personality.     When   I   say 
personality,  I  do  not  mean  merely  speaking  evil  of 
people ;  I  mean  all  mere  personal  gossip  of  every 
kind.      "  Tremendous   personages"  indeed,  Kings, 
Presidents,  and  Prime  Ministers,  must  pay  the  pe 
nalty  of  their  greatness  in  being  more  talked  about 
than  other   men.     Perhaps  the  fashion  of  talking 
about  them  has  of  late  grown  somewhat  more  than 
is  to  be  wished ;  but  we  certainly  never  see  in  a 
decent  English  paper  the  kind  of  gossip  even  about 
Mr.  Gladstone  which  we  see  in  otherwise  respecta 
ble  American  papers  about    the  obscurest  people. 
Still  less  does  an  English  daily  paper  waste  its  space 
in  discussing  or  jesting  at  the  personal  peculiarities 
and  personal  affairs  of  small  folk.    I  am  speaking,  as 
I  said,  of  daily  papers.     The  "  society  paper"  is  a 
new  and  very  unpleasant  invention,  or  rather  revival ; 


254  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

I  say  "  revival ;"  for  it  is  due  even  to  tlie  "  society 
papers"  to  say  that  those  who  are  old  enough  can 
remember  a  still  worse  style  of  "society  paper." 
But  in  England  the  papers  openly  devoted  to  per 
sonal  gossip  form  a  class  apart.  The  great  political 
papers  have  no  fellowship  with  them.  The  distinc 
tive  thing  in  the  American  press  is  that  the  fore 
most  daily  papers  play  the  part  of  a  society  paper, 
and  a  very  inferior  society  paper,  as  well.  I  sup 
pose  that,  taking  one  thing  with  another,  the  "  New 
York  Tribune"  is  the  best  of  the  American  daily 
papers.  It  would  stand  high  anywhere  both  for 
ability  and  for  character.  But  even  the  "New 
York  Tribune"  admits  personal  paragraphs  which 
would  certainly  never  find  their  way  into  the 
"Times,"  the  " Daily  News,"  or  the  "Standard." 
The  "New  York  Herald"  is  a  paper  which  the 
European  traveller  cannot  help  reading,  because  it 
is  the  only  American  paper  which  does  give  some 
systematic  account,  though  often  a  meagre  and  con 
fused  account,  of  general  European  affairs.  It  is 
very  big ;  as  a  collection  of  American  news,  it  is 
wonderful ;  it  is  in  its  own  way  a  marvel  of  suc 
cessful  enterprise.  But  its  literary  level  is  low, 
and  its  "  personal  "  paragraphs  are  a  by -word.  It 
is  not  that  they  are  always  scurrilous ;  it  is  their 
extreme  silliness  that  strikes  more  than  anything 


ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN  PAPERS.        255 

else.  It  is  hard  to  conceive  for  what  kind  of 
people  they  can  be  written ;  certainly  not  for  the 
kind  of  people  with  whom  I  spent  my  time  in 
America.  The  American  paper  in  short  is  clearly 
written  for  a  class  of  readers  inferior  to  the  average 
reader  of  the  English  paper. 

One  or  two  reasons  may  perhaps  be  seen  for 
this  difference.  Here  too  I  feel  sure  that  the  lack 
of  a  real  capital  has  something  to  do  with  it.  A 
London  daily  paper,  published  in  the  acknowledged 
capital  of  the  kingdom,  aspires  to  be  national.  It 
may  chatter  about  "  metropolitan"  and  "  provin 
cial,"  as  though  every  inch  of  Great  Britain,  unless 
perhaps  the  county  of  Middlesex,  was  not  a  sharer 
in  the  same  rights  as  every  other  inch.  But  it 
would  not  find  it  at  all  pleasant  to  do  without  the 
"  provincials"  altogether.  It  will  naturally,  and 
often  quite  rightly,  give  special  prominence  to 
things  that  go  on  in  London.  But  the  last  thing 
that  it  would  wish  is  to  be  a  mere  local  London 
paper.  It  means  to  be  read  and  understood  all  over 
the  country,  and,  as  far  as  may  be,  all  over  the 
wwld.  To  this  end  it  puts  on  a  national  character, 
and  wisely  and  honourably  eschews  mere  personal 
gossip.  The  national  character  of  the  great  London 
papers  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  a  local  London 
press  exists  by  the  side  of  them,  for  the  ben  eh' t 


256  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

of  those  to  whom  London  is  really  a  dwelling- 
place,  and  not  merely  a  place  for  sojourns  and 
meetings.  But  no  American  paper  can  have  this 
national  character,  because  no  American  city  is  a 
national  centre  in  the  sense  in  which  London  is. 
As  I  hinted  already,  London  is  New  York,  "Wash 
ington,  and  the  capital  of  each  man's  own  State, 
rolled  into  one.  The  New  York  papers  come 
nearer  than  any  other  to  the  character  of  national 
papers;  but  they  are  local  New  York  papers  as 
well.  And,  for  the  same  reason  also,  the  stan 
dard  of  local  papers  is  higher  in  England  than  in 
America.  The  daily  papers,  often  written  with 
very  high  ability,  which  now  appear  in  our  chief 
towns,  are  in  every  way  a  gain.  They  are  a  whole 
some  influence  in  times  when  many  things  tend  to 
give  too  great  importance  to  a  single  centre.  They 
often  take  a  far  more  thoughtful  and  less  conven 
tional  view  of  things  than  the  London  papers.  Still 
it  is  the  London  papers  whose  standard  they  fol 
low.  They  must  dwell  on  local  affairs  and  local 
persons  in  a  way  in  which  a  London  paper  does  not. 
But  the  London  paper  has  given  them  the  example 
of  keeping  themselves,  as  a  rule,  from  mere  gossip, 
whether  scurrilous  or  simply  silly.  Even  the  infe 
rior  local  papers  in  England  do  not  indulge  in  it 
to  the  same  extent  as  the  American  papers.  Except 


LOCAL  PAPERS.  257 

xviien  there  is  something  specially  exciting,  the 
smaller  English  local  paper  is  commonly  too  much 
afraid  of  its  own  public  to  go  in  for  anything  like 
the  "  personal "  column  of  the  "  New  York  He 
rald."  If  there  is  anywhere  in  England  anything 
like  this  last  amazing  collection  of  scraps,  it  must  be 
found  in  papers  which  do  not  make  their  way  into 
cultivated  society.  The  point  to  notice  is  that  in 
America  this  kind  of  thing  is  found  in  papers 
which  cultivated  society  can  hardly  do  without. 

Another  cause  is  surely  to  be  found  in  a  quarter 
whither  we  have  traced  quite  another  result,  that 
to  which  I  referred  when  speaking  of  certain  pecu 
liarities  of  American  pronunciation.  The  far  wider 
spread  of  a  certain  amount  of  education,  of  educa 
tion,  one  may  say,  without  cultivation,  has  the  same 
effect  on  the  press  which  it  has  on  political  life. 
It  is  not  the  highest  type  that  sets  the  standard  ;  it 
is  not  even  anything  which  imitates  or  affects  to 
follow  the  highest  type.  The  highest  type  is  there, 
just  as  much  as  it  is  here  ;  but  it  in  a  manner  keeps 
itself  back;  at  any  rate  the  daily  press  does  not 
by  preference  adapt  itself  to  its  tastes.  The  way 
in  which  things  are  constantly  told  and  discussed, 
the  mere  physical  look  of  most  of  the  papers,  the 
sensational  air  given  to  everything,  the  startling 
headings,  the  lines  of  small  capitals  breaking  in 


258  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

upon  the  ordinary  text,  all  show  that  the  American 
daily  paper  is  not  meant,  at  least  it  is  not  mainly 
meant,  for  the  higher  elements  in  American  society. 
The  refined  and  cultivated  class  have  to  put  up  with 
it ;  but  it  is  another  class  for  whom  it  is  directly 
meant.  The  English  paper,  on  the  other  hand,  at 
least  affects  to  adapt  itself  to  the  higher  order  of 
tastes.  Its  efforts  are  sometimes  a  little  amusing, 
but  that  is  the  object  aimed  at.  Anything  glar 
ingly  inconsistent  with  that  object  is  avoided.  The 
American  daily  paper  does  not  even  make  the  at 
tempt. 

I  spoke  just  now  of  weekly  papers  in  America. 
There  are  of  course  there,  as  here,  weekly  papers 
of  various  kinds.  And  the  weekly  paper  any 
where  will  hardly  aim  at  exactly  the  same  level  as 
the  daily  paper.  Its  aim  will  be  either  higher  or 
lower.  It  will  try  to  adapt  itself  either  to  better  or 
to  worse  tastes  than  the  daily  paper.  I  speak  of 
course  of  weekly  papers  which  are  strictly  news 
papers,  which  record  or  discuss  the  events  of  the  day, 
not  weekly  periodicals  which  are  purely  literary 
or  scientific.  That  the  higher  class  of  weekly  papers 
should  aim  higher  than  the  daily  paper  is  almost  in 
the  nature  of  things.  The  weekly  paper  of  the 
higher  kind  is  necessarily  addressed  to  a  smaller 
class  of  readers  than  the  daily  paper,  and  its  writers 


WEEKLY  PAPERS.  259 

have  a  longer  time  to  think  over  what  they  write. 
It  almost  necessarily  follows  that,  either  in  America 
or  in   England,  the   best  weekly   papers   will  be, 
from  one  point  of  view,  better  than  the  best  daily 
papers.     The  point  to  be  noticed  in  comparing  the 
two  countries   is   that   the   gap  between  the   best 
daily  and  the  best  weekly  paper  is  much  wider  in 
America  than  it  is  in  England.     We  see   this  in 
matter,  in  style,  in  the  mere  physical  look.      An 
American  daily  paper  is   often  almost  as  hard  to 
read  as  a  German  or  a  Greek  paper,  and  it  further 
has  the  sensational  headings  which  the  German  and 
the  Greek  spare  us.     The  American  weekly  paper 
has  not  exactly  the  same  look  as  the  British  weekly 
paper,  just  as  an  American  book  has  not  exactly 
the  same  look  as  a  British  book.     But  the  Ameri 
can   and   the  British  weekly  paper,  the  American 
and   the  British  book,  are  simply  varieties  of  the 
same  thing.    ""The  American  and  the  British  daily 
paper  must  be  set  down  as  two  essentially  different 
things. 

I  do  not  think  that  in  what  I  say  of  American 
papers  I  am  speaking  from  any  personal  feeling. 
Among  my  American  experiences  I  must  certainly 
reckon  my  personal  experiences  of  the  American 
press;  but  those  experiences  have  been  of  a  very 


260  IMPRB88ION8  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

varied  kind,  and  they  have  certainly  awakened  in 
me  much  more  of  amusement  than  of  any  other 
feeling.  I  have  had  the  honour  of  having  a  good 
many  things  said  of  me  in  American  papers,  some 
friendly,  some  unfriendly,  some  neutral.  Nor  am 
I  in  any  way  amazed  at  sayings  either  friendly  or 
unfriendly.  What  did  sometimes  amaze  me  was 
that  sometimes  a  paper  which  was  friendly  one 
day  would  be  unfriendly  the  next,  without  my 
being  conscious  of  having  done  anything  mean 
while  that  could  account  for  the  change.  My 
friends  in  such  cases  sometimes  resorted  to  the 
usual  way  of  explaining  anything  unpleasant.  An 
Irish  contributor  must  have  crept  in  unawares. 
And  I  might  also  say  that  some  of  the  things  that 
were  said  of  me  were  perfectly  true,  some  utterly 
false,  while  some  had  that  mixed  character,  that 
gathering  of  imaginary  details  round  a  certain  ker 
nel  of  fact,  which  I  conceive  to  be  the  true  notion 
of  a  myth.  It  felt  odd  at  first  to  have  one's  looks 
and  one's  clothes  described  and  criticized  in  print ; 
but  one  gets  used  to  it  as  to  other  things.  And  if 
some  disapproved  of  my  trowsers  and  some  of  my 
"  accent,"  it  made  up  for  it  to  find  oneself  de 
scribed  as  "  a  man  of  might,  used  to  move  whole 
continents."  I  had  certainly  not  rated  my  own 
powers  of  mind  or  body  at  anything  like  that 


PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES.  261 

measure ;  but  a  vanity  which  I  trust  was  harmless 
could  not  but  be  pleased  at  finding  that  there  were 
those  who  thought  me  capable  of  such  great  deeds. 
One  ought  not  to  review  one's  reviewers ;  but  I 
drew  forth  one  or  two  bits  of  criticism  so  choice 
that  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  let  them  go.  For 
instance,  I  was  seized  on  by  a  Koman  Catholic 
paper,  very  Irish  indeed,  for  a  sportive  suggestion 
made  earlier  in  these  pages  when  parts  of  them 
appeared  in  their  periodical  shape.  I  had  hinted, 
in  the  gaiety  of  my  heart,  that  the  United  States 
would  be  the  better  if  certain  Irishmen  were 
hanged,  and  I  added  that  many  people  in  America 
thought  so  too.  I  had  always  fancied  that  it  was 
another  people,  and  not  the  Irish,  who  needed  a 
surgical  operation  to  get  a  joke  into  them.  But 
it  is  a  fact  that  I  was  gravely  charged  and 
solemnly  condemned  for  the  crime  of  instigating 
to  wholesale  murder.  I  did  feel  it  a  little  hard 
that  my  Irish  critic  was  so  fierce  at  a  mere  sug 
gestion  of  hanging,  while  he  passed  by  without  a 
word,  what  he  must  have  seen  in  the  very  same 
page,  a  plainer  saying  on  behalf  of  Home  Rule  than 
most  Englishmen  would  have  dared  to  write.  I 
shall  be  tempted  to  believe  that  Home  Rule  is  of  less 
value  than  I  thought  it,  if  no  Irishman  is  to  be 
found  who  is  ready  even  to  be  hanged  for  its  sake. 


262   IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

One  or  two  censures  of  a  less  serious  kind 
have  also  caused  me  some  amusement.  That 
I  "  have  yet  much  to  learn  in  American  history " 
is  a  lighter  charge  than  that  of  stirring  up  a 
whole  continent  to  a  general  massacre,  and  it  is 
moreover  a  charge  to  which  I  must  unreservedly 
plead  guilty.  But  a  New  York  paper  once  went 
about  to  prove  the  fact  in  an  odd  way.  I  said  in 
one  of  my  lectures  that  "  several  Presidents  have 
held  office  for  two  consecutive  terms."  I  was 
simply  discussing  the  question  whether  re-election 
of  the  President  was  desirable  or  not,  a  question 
which  I  had  discussed  in  full  eighteen  years  before 
in  my  essay  on  Presidential  Government.  The 
exact  number  of  Presidents  who  had  been  re- 
elected,  as  it  was  of  no  importance  to  the  argu 
ment,  was  certainly  better  away.  But  I  was  taken 
to  task  for  imperfect  knowledge  of  American 
history,  because  I  said  "  several  Presidents"  and 
did  not  give  the  exact  number  "  six."  Now.  if  I 
were  in  a  cavilling  fit,  I  might  answer  that  the 
Presidents  of  whom  I  spoke  have  a  perfect  right 
to  say  "  we  are  seven."  The  list  runs :  "Washing 
ton,  Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe,  Jackson,  Lincoln, 
Grant.  For,  though  Lincoln  did  not  live  through 
his  second  term,  yet  he  was  elected  to  it,  which  is 
all  that  concerned  my  argument.  My  ignorance 


THE  INTERVIEWER.  263 

was  further  proved  by  my  saying  that  "  in  the  earlier 
times  of  the  Union  the  President  addressed 
Congress  in  a  speech,  like  a  King's  speech :  in 
later  times  he  has  sent  only  a  written  message." 
This  matter  too  I  had  spoken  of  nineteen  years 
before;*  and  the  names  of  the  Presidents  were  of 
no  importance  to  my  argument.  But  my  critic 
wondered  what  I  could  mean  by  "  later  times,"  when 
the  President  who  made  the  change  was  one 
who  lived  so  long  ago  as  Jefferson.  Possibly  my 
critic's  standard  of  "  later  times"  may  differ  from 
that  of  one  who  was  for  a  while  contemporary  with 
Jefferson ;  but  I  could  not  help  taking  refuge  this 
time  in  the  Irish  theory.  For  surely  no  native- 
born  American  citizen  could  have  thought,  as  the 
critic  seemed  to  think,  that  the  presidency  of 
Jefferson  was  not  a  later  time  than  the  presidencies 
of  Washington  and  the  first  Adams. 

But  there  is  one  feature  of  the  American  news 
paper  system  which  the  New  World  surely  has  all 
to  itself.  At  all  events,  it  is  in  the  Old  World 
brought  to  bear  only  on  those  exalted  persons  who 
must  be  prepared  for  everything.  One  is  used  to 
have  odd  things,  though  perhaps  not  quite  such 

*  History  of  Federal  Government,  i.  291. 


264  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

odd  things  as  one  sees  in  America,  said  of  one  in 
the  newspapers  of  one's  own  land.  But  the  inter 
viewer,  the  man  who  asks  you  questions  simply  in 
order  to  print  your  answers  in  a  newspaper,  is,  as 
far  as  my  experience  goes,  purely  American.  To 
be  sure  I  was  interviewed  before  I  left  England, 
and  that  by  a  fellow-Britisher  ;  but  then  he  was  in 
the  employ  of  a  New  York  paper,  and  his  por 
trait  of  me  appeared  at  New  York  as  soon  as  I 
landed.  After  I  reached  America  I  was  inter 
viewed  a  good  many  times.  The  process  is  not 
always  pleasant;  for  the  questioning  largely  con 
sists  in  asking  for  one's  impressions  on  various 
American  matters,  and  specially  on  points  of  like 
ness  and  unlikeness  between  America  and  England. 
It  is  certainly  odd  that,  when  so  many.  American 
papers  are  always  assuring  the  world  that  they  do 
not  care  for  British  opinion,  they  should  still  be 
so  untiringly  anxious  to  find  out  what  British 
opinion  is.  And  the  questioning  on  these  points 
sometimes  puts  one  in  an  unfair  dilemma.  If  one 
blames  anything,  one  runs  an  obvious  chance  of 
giving  offence.  And  if  one  praises  anything,  one 
runs  the  chance  of  giving  offence  on  the  subtler 
ground  of  being  thought  "condescending"  and 
"patronizing."  Another  subject  on  which  the 
interviewers  were  very  anxious  to  get  something 


SPECIMENS  OF  INTERVIEWING.  g6f) 

out  of  me  was  Ireland.  On  that  subject  I  had  my 
own  reasons  for  keeping  strict  silence.  I  was  also 
asked  a  good  many  questions  about  myself,  and  I 
seemed  to  arouse  a  good  deal  of  amazement  when 
ever  I  had  to  explain  that  I  was  not  a  professor 
and  that  I  did  not  live  in  a  town.  I  fancy  too 
that  I  sank  a  good  deal  in  the  opinions  of  some  of 
my  questioners  when  I  had  to  tell  them  that  I 
knew  nothing  about  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde,  whose  name 
was  then  to  be  seen  in  large  letters  on  the  walls, 
as  his  photographs,  in  various  attitudes,  were  to 
be  seen  in  the  windows,  at  Washington  and  at 
several  other  places.  It  was  too  true  that  I  had 
never  heard  of  Mr.  Wilde  till  I  took  up  his  poems 
in  the  house  of  a  gentleman  in  Massachusetts.  I 
afterwards  learned  more  about  him  from  a  lady  at 
Washington,  who  showed  me  a  poem  of  Mr.  Wilde's 
which  won  the  Newdigate  prize  at  Oxford.  The 
subject  was  Ravenna,  and  in  it  one  half-line  was 
given  to  Theodoric.  But  I  was  sometimes  pressed 
on  much  more  amazing  subjects.  An  interviewer 
at  Cincinnati  seemed  to  think  himself  wronged 
because  I  could  tell  him  nothing  whatever  in  an 
swer  to  what  seemed  to  me  a  very  strange  ques 
tion;  "Do  you  think  there  is  most  drunkenness 
on  Sunday  afternoons  in  English  or  American 
cities?"  An  interviewer  further  west  represented 


266  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

me  as  saying  that,  the  further  west  I  went,  the 
better  I  found  the  newspapers.  I  had  not  ventured 
on  any  such  invidious  comparisons.  I  had  kept 
myself  to  what  I  thought  the  safe  and  undeniable 
remark  that  the  Western  papers  were  digger  than 
the  Eastern.  On  the  whole,  I  got  used  to  the  in 
terviewers,  and  I  was  specially  charmed  with  the 
moral  portrait  of  me  which  was  given  by  one  of 
them  at  St.  Louis.  From  him  I  learned  that,  when 
I  don't  know  a  thing,  I  say  that  I  don't  know  it, 
and  that,  when  I  do  know  a  thing,  I  speak  as  if  I 
were  quite  certain  about  it.  To  the  interviewer, 
as  I  gathered  from  his  report,  this  way  of  acting 
seemed  a  little  strange,  fehough  he  clearly  approved 
of  the  eccentricity.  To  my  own  mind  the  puzzle 
would  be  why  any  man  should  either  pretend  to 
know  a  thing  that  he  does  not  know  or  pretend 
not  to  know  a  thing  that  he  does  know. 

But  it  must  not  be  thought  that  the  process  of 
interviewing  is  a  privilege  or  a  punishment  set  apart 
for  the  stranger.  It  is  equally  the  lot  of  the  native. 
As  far  as  I  could  see,  not  only  must  every  public 
man  expect  to  be  interviewed  whenever  it  is  thought 
to  be  for  the  public  good,  but  every  private  man 
must  expect  to  be  interviewed  whenever  it  is 
thought  that  the  world  in  general  has  a  right  to 
know  about  his  private  affairs.  I  remember  one 


A  NEW  YORK  INTERVIEWER.  267 

very  strange  case.  I  do  not  bear  in  mind  the  ex 
act  details;  but  the  main  part  of  the  story  was 
that  a  certain  father  had  refused  his  consent  to  his 
daughter's  marriage  with  a  certain  suitor.  There 
were  some  odd  features  in  the  story,  and  the 
father's  refusal  led  to  a  very  pretty  quarrel,  rising, 
I  think,  to  something  like  a  breach  of  the  peace. 
In  no  part  of  the  world  could  either  tongues  or 
pens  be  expected  to  keep  from  wagging  on  such 
provocation  as  this.  But  it  did  seem  a  strong 
measure  when  a  New  York  interviewer,  catering 
for  the  public  information,  forced  himself  on  the 
disappointed  and  wrathful  lover,  and  asked  for  a 
minute  account  of  all  his  actions  and  feelings  du 
ring  the  whole  business.  For  once  the  interviewer 
was  baulked ;  the  young  man  altogether  refused 
to  make  a  father  confessor  either  of  the  interviewer 
or  of  the  public  which  he  represented.  But  it  was 
easy  to  see  from  the  tone  in  which  the  interviewer 
told  his  tale  that  he  held  that  the  refusal  was  a 
deep  wrong  done  both  to  himself  and  to  every 
newspaper-reader  in  the  country. 

XYI. 

I  spoke  a  little  while  back  of  two  or  three  bits  of 
criticism   on   myself  in   American   newspapers,  to 


268  IMPRESSIONS  OF  TEE   UNITED  STATES. 

which  I  could  refer  with  simple  amusement.  I 
will  end  my  story  by  speaking  of  another  criticism 
of  a  graver  character,  which  however  I  might  not 
have  spoken  of,  if  it  had  not  opened  a  line  of 
thought  of  some  moment  with  regard  to  the  great 
events  of  the  last  two-and-twenty  years  of  Ameri 
can  history.  It  is  only  natural  that  the  great  civil 
war  should  still  be  largely  in  men's  minds,  and  it  is 
perhaps  not  very  wonderful  that  that  touchiness  of 
which  I  spoke  long  ago,  that  readiness  to  imagine 
slights,  even  to  look  out  for  slights,  which  is  so 
characteristic  of  a  large  class  of  people  in  America, 
reaches  its  height  on  all  points  connected  with  the 
civil  war.  To  be  sure,  that  war  has  already  become 
almost  mythical;  President  Lincoln,  though  he 
died  only  eighteen  years  ago,  has  already  become 
something  more  like  a  deified  hero  or  a  canonized 
saint  than  simply  a  great  ruler,  with  his  merits  and 
his  faults  like  other  men.  In  the  eyes  of  a  great 
many  he  is  one  whom  it  is  not  enough  to  admire, 
on  the  whole  to  approve  ;  you  must  bow  down.  Of 
course  this  superstition  is  not  to  be  found  among 
the  best  class  of  Americans ;  but  it  is  exactly  the 
state  of  mind  which  is  largely  represented  by  the 
newspapers.  It  would  seem  to  be  thought  patri 
otic  to  give  out  that  a  man  has  said  something 
against  the  cause,  even  when  nothing  of  the  kind 


CHARGE  OF  "SCORNFUL  RIDICULE."     269 

has  been  said  or  thought.  I  have  heard  it  cruelly 
said  that  there  are  some  women  who,  if  they  have 
to  take  a  journey  alone,  think  themselves  wronged 
if  they  are  not  insulted  by  some  man  before  they 
come  to  the  end  of  it,  and  who  in  such  a  case  in 
vent,  or  perhaps  really  imagine,  some  tale  of  the 
kind  which  has  not  happened.  If  this  be  so,  it  is 
an  odd  form  of  an  odd  kind  of  self-consciousness 
and  self-importance.  But  experience  seems  to 
show  that  the  thing  is  possible.  Certainly  a  feel 
ing  of  the  same  kind  seems  to  find  a  place  in  the 
minds  of  some  American  newspaper-writers.  To 
no  other  source  can  I  trace  one  comment  at  least 
which  has  been  made  on  myself,  and  that  in  a  quar 
ter  where  I  did  not  look  for  it.  At  mere  absurdi 
ties  it  is  easy  to  laugh  ;  it  is  another  thing  when 
one  finds  oneself  charged,  on  a  very  grave  matter, 
with  having  done  what  one  never  did,  and  what 
was  one  of  the  last  things  that  one  would  have 
wished  to  do.  I  was  certainly  a  good  deal  amazed, 
I  was  even  tempted  to  be  a  little  angry,  when  I 
read  such  words  as  the  following.  They  came  in 
the  «  Boston  Advertiser,"  October  7,  1882,  a  paper 
which  up  to  that  time  had  been  very  civil  to  me. 
The  writer  was  discussing  what  I  said  about  the 
use  of  the  names  "British"  and  "English,"  and 
his  immediate  reference  was  to  a  remark  quoted 


270  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

by  me  *  from  an  American  friend,  which  he  oddly 
mistook  for  a  "  suggestion"  of  my  own. 

Mr.  Freeman  is  entirely  mistaken  in  suggesting  that  the  use 
or  the  disuse  of  the  word  [British]  had  anything  to  do  with 
America's  liking  or  disliking  for  England.  Of  that  liking  or 
disliking  he  professes  not  to  understand  the  key.  Here  it  is. 
In  1810,  Mr.  Allston  wrote,  and  wrote  truly: — 

While  the  manners,  while  the  arts, 

That  mould  a  nation's  soul, 
Still  cling  around  our  hearts, 

Between,  let  ocean  roll, 

Our  joint  communion  breaking  with  the  sun, 

Yet,  still,  from  either  beach 

The  voice  of  blood  shall  reach, 
More  audible  than  speech,  "  We  are  one!" 

Up  till  1861  whenever  that  stanza  was  repeated  at  a  public 
meeting  in  America,  the  house  rang  with  applause.  Till  1861 
Americans  supposed  it  was  true;  in  1861  this  nation  looked  to 
"Britain"  for  sympathy  in  a  great  struggle.  At  the  hands  of 
the  governing  classes  of  "Britain"  she  received  nothing  but 
insults;  from  the  lips  of  Mr.  Freeman,  among  others,  she  re 
ceived  scornful  ridicule.  From  the  working  men  of  England 
she  received  cordial  sympathy.  It  is  to  that  period  only  that 
there  dates  back  the  indifference  which  Mr.  Freeman  thinks 
he  observed,  as  to  the  right  which  Americans  have  to  claim 
the  English  name. 

Now  an  outburst  like  this  fairly  takes  one 
aback.  It  goes  beyond  the  common  licence  which 

*  Sec  p.  29. 


THE  CHARGE  DISPROVED.  271 

one   grants   to   people   who  write  in  a  hurry.     It 
distinctly   states    the  thing  that  is  not.     I  do  not 
exactly    see    why     I    am     reckoned    among    the 
"  governing  classes,"  seeing  that  I  have  never  had 
so  much  as  a  seat  in  Parliament.     But  it  is  more 
important  to  ask  when,  where,  and  how,  "  America" 
ever   "  received   scornful   ridicule   from  my  lips." 
"  Lips"  ought  in  strictness  to  imply  speeches,  and 
I  certainly  did  not  make  any  speeches  on  American 
matters.     But     will   the   "Boston   Advertiser"  he 
good  enough  to  give  me  a  reference  to  any  passage 
of  my  published  writings,  where   I    have    spoken 
of    the    United    States,    or   their    constitution,   or 
anything   to   do    with   them,  with  "scornful  ridi 
cule"  ?     Will  he  show  me  any  passage  in  which  I 
speak  of  them  otherwise  than  with  the  respect  and 
interest  due  to  a  great  English  commonwealth,  one 
whose   constitution   has   been    one    of   my  special 
objects  of  study  ?     He  will  certainly  find  passages 
which  will  show  that,  when  the  United  States  were 
split  asunder    for  a  season,  I  was  not  a  fanatical 
partisan   of   either  side.     But  surely  to  hold  that 
there  was  something  to  be  said  on  both  sides  in  a 
great  quarrel,  though  certainly  much  more  to  be 
said  on  one  side  than  on  the  other,  is  not  the  same 
thing   as  throwing  "scornful  ridicule"  on    either 
side,  least  of   all   on  the  side  on  which  one  holds 


272   IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

that  there  is  most  to  be  said.  Let  me  here  state 
exactly  what  my  position  was  with  regard  to  the 
American  civil  war,  because  I  fancy  it  was  a 
position  which  was  not  shared  by  very  many.  I 
never  for  a  moment  doubted  the  formal  right  of 
the  Northern  cause,  or,  to  speak  more  accurately, 
the  cause  of  the  Federal  Government.  That  right 
no  man  could  doubt  who  had  given  any  serious 
thought  to  the  first  principles  of  a  federal  con 
stitution.  Secession  was  formally  rebellion,  just 
as  much  as  rebellion  against  a  king.  Nor  could 
I  see  that  the  Southern  States  had  any  of  those 
reasons  to  justify  their  rebellion  which  have  often 
fully  justified  rebellion  against  kings,  and  some 
times  against  commonwealths  too.  Still  I  could 
not  help  seeing  that  the  rebellion  of  a  sovereign 
State — in  a  federal  system  those  words  are  not 
contradictory,  and  in  England  we  have  had  a 
rebel  king — is  something  practically  different  from 
the  rebellion  of  private  men.  I  could  quite  under 
stand  that  many  men,  who  were  personally  op 
posed  to  secession,  who  may  even  have  voted  against 
secession,  might,  when  their  States  actually 
seceded,  honestly  deem  it  their  duty  to  go  with  the 
State.  And,  though  I  fully  admitted  the  formal 
right  of  the  Federal  Government  to  bring  back 
the  seceding  States  by  force,  I  greatly  doubted 


CASE  OF  SECESSION.  273 

the  wisdom  of  exercising  that  right.  Had  a 
single  inland  State  seceded  all  by  itself,  had  even 
South  Carolina  remained  alone  and  not  been 
joined  by  any  others,  I  could  then  have  had 
no  doubt  as  to  the  wisdom  of  its  exercise. 
It  seemed  different  when  the  seceding  States 
formed  one  large  section  of  the  country,  quite 
able  to  all  appearance,  from  its  extent  and  geo 
graphical  position,  to  form  a  great  confedera 
tion  for  themselves.  I  did  doubt  whether  it  was 
wise  in  such  a  case  to  try  forcibly  to  bring  the 
seceding  States  back  into  a  relation  from  which 
they  wished  to  escape.  It  seemed  too  much  like 
the  Frenchman's  alternative,  "Be  my  brother,  or 
I  will  kill  you."  That,  even  granting  the  rightful- 
ness  of  the  war,  I  could  not  at  the  time  approve  of 
every  step  taken  by  the  Federal  Government  is,  I 
trust,  not  unpardonable.  I  could  not  unreservedly 
pledge  myself  to  approve  of  every  act  even  of  Mr. 
Gladstone.  If  I  had  lived  in  the  ninth  century,  I 
might  have  held  myself  free  to  exercise  my  own 
judgement  even  on  the  acts  of  Alfred.  If,  for  a 
while,  I  expected  the  result  of  the  struggle  to  be 
other  than  it  was,  I  certainly  judged  wrongly ; 
but  I  assuredly  was  not  alone  in  wrongly  judging. 
And  fully  holding,  as  I  did,  the  abstract  right  of 
the  Federal  Government,  simply  doubting  of  the 


274  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

wisdom  of  exercising  that  right,  acknowledging 
that  it  was  for  them,  not  for  me,  to  judge  of  that 
wisdom,  it  is  not  very  wonderful  if,  as  the  war 
went  on,  my  sympathies  turned  more  and  more  to 
the  Northern  side,  and  if,  when  the  war  ended,  I 
could  fully  rejoice  in  its  ending.  If  my  Boston 
critic,  instead  of  making  a  random  attack,  had 
taken  the  trouble  to  find  out  what  I  really  said, 
he  might  have  been  dissatisfied  with  me  as  a 
somewThat  lukewarm  supporter,  but  he  would  not 
have  risked  a  saying  so  utterly  contrary  to  the 
truth  as  that  I  ever  treated  the  cause  of  the  Union 
with  "  scornful  ridicule." 

Now  tliis  way  of  talking  springs  from  a  state  of 
mind  which  is  very  easy  to  understand,  because 
it  arises  from  causes  which  are  common  to  all 
mankind,  and  which  we  may  see  at  work  in  full 
force  among  ourselves.  But  it  further  shows 
that  state  of  mind  as  affected  by  the  peculiar 
relations  between  the  mother-country  and  its 
independent  colonies.  To  every  citizen  of  the 
United  States  the  Union  naturally  was  and  is 
very  dear.  The  feeling  of  its  greatness,  the  pride 
in  its  greatness,  is  a  feeling  of  essentially  the  same 
kind  as  the  ordinary  Briton's  pride  in  the  greatness 
of  the  "British  empire."  But  it  is  the  same  feeling 
in  a  much  higher  shape ;  pride  in  the  greatness 


FEELING   OF  PRIDE  IN  THE   UNION.      275 

of  a  brotherly  union  is  surely  a  nobler  feeling  than 
pride  in  mere  dominion.  And  I  conceive  that 
this  natural  and  praiseworthy  feeling  of  pride  in 
the  Union  was  not  confined  to  the  citizens  of  the 
Northern  States,  but  was  to  be  found  in  Southern 
bosoms  also.  It  might  be  overcome  by  a  yet 
stronger  feeling ;  but  I  conceive  that  no  citizen  of 
the  South,  though  he  might  bring  himself  to  look 
on  secession  as  the  only  means  to  compass  his  ends, 
would  have  sought  secession  for  its  own  sake  so 
long  as  he  could  hope  to  maintain  the  Union  on 
his  own  terms.  Indeed  there  is  some  reason  to 
think  that,  in  most  of  the  Southern  States,  seces 
sion  was  not  at  first  the  wish  of  the  majority. 
It  was  rather  the  wish  of  a  zealous  and  active 
minority,  which,  as  always  happens  in  such  cases, 
overcame  a  majority  which  had  no  wish  to  destroy 
the  Union,  but  which  was  not  willing  to  give  itself 
much  trouble  to  maintain  it.  "When  secession  was 
once  voted,  when  war  had  once  begun,  men  who  had 
had  no  wish  to  secede  fought  heart  and  soul  against 
compulsory  union.  Their  position  I  hold  to  have 
been  formally  wrong  and  the  position  of  those  who 
fought  for  the  Union  to  have  been  formally  right ; 
but  the  position  of  both  sides  is  perfectly  in 
telligible.  I  suspect  that  most  of  us,  if  we  had 
chanced  to  be  born  in  the  Northern  or  the 


276  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

Southern  States,  would  have  done  as  most  people 
in  the  Northern  and  the  Southern  States  severally 
did.  But  the  Englishman  of  Britain,  at  least  as 
the  case  seemed  to  me,  had  no  call  to  share  in 
the  passions  of  either  side.  Wishing  well  to  his 
brethren  in  either  section  of  the  Union,  he  would 
regret  that  any  strife,  above  all  that  such  a  strife, 
should  have  arisen  between  them.  But  in  the 
feeling  for  the  Union,  as  an  object  in  itself,  a 
feeling  perfectly  natural  and  praiseworthy  in  the 
Northern  supporters  of  the  Union,  he  could  not 
be  expected  to  share.  The  welfare  and  freedom 
of  his  American  kinsfolk  were  a  great  deal  to  him, 
but  the  Union,  a  mere  means  towards  securing  that 
welfare  and  freedom,  might  well  be  very  little  to 
him.  He  might  naturally  say,  "  Let  my  brethren 
of  the  Western  continent  form  one  confederation 
or  two  or  a  dozen,  as  they  may  think  best ;  how 
ever  they  may  arrange  themselves,  I  shall  wrish  well 
to  all  of  them."  This  would  be  a  natural  view  for 
an  Englishman  of  Britain  who  was  not  pulled  by 
any  strong  prepossessions  of  his  own  towards  a 
more  zealous  championship  of  one  side  or  the  other. 
But  it  is  not  a  state  of  mind  into  which  either  the 
North  or  the  South  could  be  expected  to  enter. 
Both  sides  looked  for  something  more.  The  men 
of  the  Northern  States,  loving  the  Union,  deeming 


AMERICAN  FEELING.  277 

the  Union  unjustly  torn  asunder,  naturally  looked 
for  sympathy  to  the  men  of  the  elder  land.  Look 
ing  on  themselves  as  the  representatives  of  the 
United  States,  and  thereby  of  the  English  folk  on 
the  soil  of  the  United  States,  looking  on  the  States 
that  had  seceded  as  members  that  had  by  their  own 
act  cut  themselves  off  from  the  common  fellowship, 
it  was  perfectly  natural  in  the  men  of  the  Northern 
States  to  expect  from  their  British  kinsfolk,  not 
only  the  general  interest  and  good  will  of  kinsfolk, 
but  a  special  interest  and  sympathy  in  the  special 
work  in  which  they  were  engaged,  the  maintenance 
of  the  Union.  It  was  not  wonderful  if  they  forgot 
that  the  maintenance  of  the  Union  could  not  be  to 
their  British  kinsfolk  an  object  as  precious  for  its 
own  sake  as  it  was  to  themselves.  Nor  was  it  won 
derful  if  they  forgot  that  the  men  of  the  Southern 
States  also  might,  just  as  naturally  from  their  own 
point  of  view,  if  not  just  as  rightfully,  look  for 
sympathy  from  their  British  kinsfolk.  Now  both 
sides  got  sympathy  in  plenty  from  different  classes 
and  parties  in  Great  Britain ;  it  is  of  course  part  of 
the  charge  against  Great  Britain  that  the  South  got 
any  sympathy  at  all.  My  Boston  critic  complains 
that  what  he  calls  the  "  governing  classes" — among 
whom  I  find  myself  so  strangely  reckoned — be 
stowed  upon  the  North  "nothing  but  insults." 


278  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

This  is  undoubtedly  true  of  a  great  many,  and  it  is 
much,  to  the  shame  of  those  of  whom  it  is  true.  So 
far  as  British  sympathy  for  the  South  arose  from 
dislike  or  jealousy  of  the  North,  no  feeling  could 
be  more  unworthy.  Northern  indignation  at  the 
treatment  which  the  North  received  from  a  large 
class  in  England  is  perfectly  just  ;  and  even  North 
ern  disappointment  at  finding  that  England  in  ge 
neral  was  not  prepared  to  take  up  the  Northern 
cause  with  all  the  fervour  of  the  North  itself,  though 
not  perfectly  just,  is  perfectly  natural.  Still  it  is 
a  little  unfair,  when  a  Northern  writer  speaks  as 
if  no  kind  of  people  in  England  but  "working 
men"  had  shown  any  good  will  to  the  Northern 
cause.  This  is  hard  upon  not  a  few  English  scholars 
and  public  men  who  were  as  zealous  for  that  cause 
as  any  English  working  man  could  be,  almost  as 
zealous  as  any  born  Northerner  could  be.  Among 
them  I  do  not  claim  to  be  reckoned ;  as  I  never 
was  a  partisan  of  the  South,  I  never  was  an  enthu 
siastic  partisan  of  the  North.  But  it  is  surely  un 
fair  to  charge  one  who  did  not  indeed  share  the 
passions  of  the  North,  but  -whose  intellectual  con 
victions  were  on  the  Northern  side,  with  having 
treated  the  North  with  "  scornful  ridicule." 

It  was   in  truth  perhaps   impossible  for  one  to 
whom  the  subject  of  Federal  Government  was  a 


FEDERALISM.  279 

matter  of  scientific  study   to   enter   strongly   into 
the  passions  of  either  side.     While  the  American 
Union  was  parted  asunder  and  put  together  again, 
I  was  reading  and  writing  how  the  Achaian  Union 
was  put  together,  parted  asunder,  and  put  together 
again.     Had  the  federal  form  of  government  been 
cast  aside  for  some  other,  it  might  have  been  a  thing 
to  stir  up  some  indignation.     Had  the  Union  been 
overthrown  by  a  tyrant,  it  would  indeed  have  been 
a  thing  to  stir  up  a  great  deal  of  indignation.     But 
when  one  federal  body  split  into  two,  the   thing 
was  too  curious  a  study  for  a  scientific   observer 
of  federalism  to  get  very  angry  either  way.     He 
might  even  be  sometimes  tempted  to  some  slight 
satisfaction  at  his  range  of  observation  being  en 
larged.      And   one   thing    at    least   he    might   do 
which   was    hardly   of    the    nature    of   "scornful 
ridicule."     My  Boston  critic  can  hardly  know  how 
often    I   worked    during    those    years,    both    in 
acknowledged    and    in    anonymous    writings,    to 
answer  the  fallacies  which  were  endlessly  put  for 
ward  by  the  English  supporters  of  the  South.     As 
in  many  other  cases,  men  were  led  astray  by  the 
misuse  of   a  name.      As  the   government   of   the 
United  States  was  a  federal  government,  the  word 
"  Federal "  naturally  got  into  everybody's   mouth. 
The  "  Federal  Government,"  the  "  Federal  army," 


280  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

&c.,  did  so  and  so.  Many  people  in  England  seemed 
to  think  that  the  word  "Federal"  was,  not  a 
general  name  for  governments  of  a  particular  class, 
but  the  particular  name  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States.  I  firmly  believe  that  some  of  them 
would  have  been  surprised  if  any  one  had  chanced 
to  speak  just  then  of  the  Federal  Government  of 
Switzerland.  The  one  side  were  "  the  Federals ;" 
the  other  side  were  "the  Confederates.''  Many 
seemed  quite  to  forget  that  the  two  names,  though 
for  the  nonce  applied  to  two  hostile  sets  of  people, 
in  themselves  meant  exactly  the  same  thing.  Be 
cause  they  disliked  one  particular  federal  govern 
ment,  they  turned  their  dislike  into  an  argument 
against  the  federal  principle  in  general,  forgetting 
that  all  the  while  they  were  backing  up  one  federal 
government  against  another.  That  certain  mem 
bers  of  a  federal  union  had  chosen  to  separate  from 
it  was  held  to  prove  the  inherent  worthlessness  of 
all  federal  union.  They  who  so  argued  did  not 
stop  to  think  that  this  argument  told  just  as  much 
against  the  Southern  Confederation  as  against  the 
original  Union ;  they  did  not  stop  to  think  that  the 
same  argument  would  equally  tell  against  kingly 
government.  If  certain  parts  of  America  had 
shown  themselves  dissatisfied  with  federal  rule, 
many  more  parts  of  Europe  had  shown  themselves 


FALLACIES  ON  THE  SOUTHERN  SIDE.     281 

dissatisfied  with  kingly  rule.  During  the  years  when 
I  was  supposed  to  have  employed  myself  in  loading 
"America"  with  "scornful  ridicule,"  I  was  really 
rather  largely  employed,  not  exactly  in  supporting 
the  cause  of  the  North,  but  in  answering  fallacies 
of  advocates  of  the  South  which  hindered  any  fair 
discussion  of  the  points  really  at  issue  between  the 
two  parties.  I  will  venture  to  reproduce  a  speci 
men  of  the  kind  of  language  which  I  really  used, 
and  to  which  the  name  of  "  scornful  ridicule"  is 
surely  somewhat  strangely  applied. 

It  is  the  American  system,  in  its  most  essential  features, 
which  forms  the  natural  object  for  the  imitation  of  other  com 
munities  of  Englishmen  beyond  the  seas.  It  is  for  them  to  seize 
on  the  leading  principles  of  the  immortal  work  of  Washington 
and  Hamilton,  to  alter  such  of  its  general  provisions  as  experi 
ence  has  shown  to  be  defective,  to  work  in  such  changes  in 
detail  as  may  be  needed  by  any  particular  commonwealth. 
The  American  Constitution,  with  its  manifest  defects,  still  re 
mains  one  of  the  most  abiding  monuments  of  human  wisdom, 
and  it  has  received  a  tribute  to  its  general  excellence  such  as 
no  other  political  system  was  ever  honoured  with.  The  States 
which  have  seceded  from  its  government,  the  States  which  look 
with  the  bitterest  hatred  on  its  actual  administrators,  have  re- 
enacted  it  for  themselves  in  all  its  essential  provisions.  No 
thing  but  the  inveterate  blindness  of  party-spirit  can  hinder 
this  simple  fact  from  at  once  stopping  the  mouths  of  cavillers. 
Sneers  at  republics,  at  democracies,  at  federal  systems,  are, 
wherever  they  are  found,  mere  proofs  of  ignorance  and  shal- 
lowness;  but  there  arc  no  mouths  in  which  they  are  so  utterly 


282  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

inconsistent,  so  utterly  self-condemning,  as  in  the  mouths  of 
champions  of  the  Southern  Confederation.* 

There  are  doubtless  some  to  whom  it  will  be 
matter  of  offence  that  I  have,  even  in  the  above 
passage,  implied  that  the  great  men  of  the  Ameri 
can  Union  were  after  all  only  men,  and  that  their 
work  shares  the  common  imperfection  of  human 
things.  With  such  I  cannot  argue,  and  I  do  not 
think  that  any  rational  person  in  the  United  States 
will  expect  me  to  argue.  But  the  state  of  mind 
which  is  displayed  by  this  feeling  is  really  a  very 
curious  subject  of  study.  Some  people  in  America 
seem  really  to  think  that  the  United  States,  their 
constitution  and  all  that  belongs  to  them,  did  not 
come  into  being  by  the  ordinary  working  of  human 
causes,  but  sprang  to  life  by  some  special  creation 
or  revelation.  They  think  themselves  wronged  if 
it  is  implied  that  they  are  not  absolute  autochthones, 
but  that  they  are  the  kinsfolk  of  certain  other  nations. 
They  think  themselves  wronged  if  it  is  implied  that 
their  institutions  did  not  spring  at  once  from  the 
ground,  but  that  they  were,  like  the  institutions  of 
other  nations,  gradually  wrought  out  of  a  store  com 
mon  to  them  with  some  other  branches  of  mankind. 
That  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  a  right 

*  Historical  Essays,  First  Series,  p.  406. 


"  ORIGINALITY. "  283 

to  a  great  inheritance  of  past  ages,  that  the  whole 
history  of  civilized   man  is  a  possession  in  which 
they  have  a  lawful  share,  is  in  the  eyes  of  these 
reasoners  a  reproach  from  which  they  are  eager  to 
escape.     Those   who   teach   such    a   doctrine  deny 
them  "  all  originality."     It  is  certainly  an  odd  taste 
when  a  man  who  has  a  perfect  right  to  an  unbroken 
and  illustrious  pedigree  would  rather  be  taken  for  a 
chance  child  picked  up  by  the  road  side ;  but  such 
seems  really  to  be  very  like  the  frame  of  mind  of 
some  on  the  other  side  of  Ocean  who  are  anxious  to 
maintain  the  "  originality"  of  all  American  things. 
One  might  be  curious  to  know  whether  they  think 
that  the  English  language  and  the  Christian  religion 
were  invented  on  American  soil  after  1776.     The 
wish  to  be  "  original,"  in  the  sense  that  is  meant, 
the  wish  to  have  no  history,  no  traditions,  no  con 
nexion  with  the  past  in  any  shape,  is  surely  the 
oddest  wish  ever  framed.     Happily  for  the  Ameri 
can  branch  of  our  people,  they  have  as  little  claim 
to     "originality"    in     this    sense    as    the   British 
branch.      The   founders    of    their    commonwealth 
were  men  too  wise  to  seek  after  "  originality"  of 
that  kind.     The  best  witness  to  that  truth  is   the 
comparison  with  another  set  of  reformers  who  did 
strive  to  be  "original."      The  year  1789  opened 
somewhat  different  eeras  in  America  and  in  France. 


284  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

The  conservative  wisdom  of  the  founders  of  the 
American  constitution  gave  their  people  the  old  in 
stitutions  of  their  own  folk,  modified  as  change  of 
place  and  circumstance  called  for.  Their  work,  not 
being  "  original,"  has  lived  on  ;  it  has  gone  through 
the  most  frightful  of  trials ;  but  it  abides  and  pro 
mises  long  to  abide.  The  "  original "  work  of  the 
men  who  strove  to  break  with  the  past  in  all  things 
has  another  tale  to  tell.  Kevolutions,  restorations, 
tyrannies,  new  schemes  warranted  to  last  for  ever 
and  breaking  down  at  the  first  trial  of  their  strength 
—such  is  the  outcome  of  "  originality"  in  political 
institutions,  a  fruit  of  which  happily  neither  branch 
of  the  English  folk  has  tasted. 

To  come  back  for  a  moment  to  myself,  I  believe 
that  my  own  great  fault,  a  fault  which  I  see  in 
some  quarters  is  deemed  unpardonable,  is  that  I 
have  more  than  once  used  the  words  "  disruption  of 
the  United  States."  In  all  that  I  have  thus  far 
said  in  this  section  I  have  spoken  wholly  of  what 
has  been  said  in  newspapers;  but,  while  I  was  at 
Baltimore,  I  was  met  by  a  visitor  from  a  distant 
State,  Wisconsin  I  think,  who  told  me,  with  perfect 
civility  but  with  a  good  deal  of  emphasis,  that, 
when  he  saw  those  words  in  the  title-page  of  a  vo 
lume  of  mine,  he  would  not  look  at  any  page  that 
came  after.  And  I  can  see  by  various  references  in 


"DISRUPTION."  285 

newspapers  that  the  use  of  the  word  is  thought  to 
be  something  about  which  I  may  fairly  be  twitted, 
something  which  shows  how  utterly  I  failed  to  un 
derstand  what  was  going  on  twenty  years  back. 
And  I  confess  that,  in  the  early  stages  of  the  strug 
gle,  I  did  in  one  way  fail  to  understand ;  that  is,  I 
expected  that  the  struggle  would  have  another  issue 
from  that  which  it  had.  But  that  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  word  "  Disruption,"  which  is  a  simple 
statement  of  an  undoubted  fact.  I  do  not  like  the 
word ;  that  is,  I  would  rather  use  an  English  word, 
if  I  could  think  of  one  ;  but  it  must  be  an  English 
word  of  exactly  the  same  meaning.  That  there  was 
a  disruption  of  the  United  States,  that  is,  that  part 
of  the  United  States  split  away  from  the  rest,  that 
for  a  while  there  were  two  federal  bodies  where 
there  had  before  been  only  one,  is  among  the  plain 
est  facts  of  history.  That  the  divided  body  was 
again  united  in  no  way  gets  rid  of  the  fact  that  it 
once  was  divided.  I  more  than  once  answered  ob 
jectors  with  a  parable.  "  If  you  should  be  so  un 
lucky  as  to  break  your  leg,  and  a  skilful  surgeon 
should  set  it  so  well  that  you  could  walk  just  as  well 
as  you  could  before,  still  that  happy  cure  would  not 
get  rid  of  the  fact  that  your  leg  had  been  broken." 
In  short,  if  there  were  no  disruption,  how  came 
there  to  be  any  civil  war  at  all  ?  The  civil  war 


286  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

came  of  secession,  and  the  secession  of  some  of  the 
members  of  the  body  is  the  disruption  of  the  whole 
body.  What  happened  to  the  American  Union  in 
the  nineteenth  century  A.D.  had  happened  to  the 
Achaian  Union  in  the  third  century  B.C.  In  both 
cases  there  was  disruption ;  in  both  cases  there  was 
reunion.  This  unwillingness  to  look  a  simple  his 
torical  fact  in  the  face,  and  to  call  it  by  its  natural 
name,  is  surely  the  very  height  of  national  touchi 
ness.  I  can  hardly  conceive  such  a  feeling  in  any 
other  case.  A  Venetian  would  hardly  make  it  a 
point  of  national  honour  to  put  out  of  sight  the  fact 
that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  the  League  of  Cam- 
bray,  and  that  that  league  was  followed  by  a  dis 
ruption  of  the  Venetian  dominions  far  more  tho 
rough  than  happened  either  in  the  Achaian  or  in  the 
American  case.  He  would  rather  dwell  on  the  en 
durance  and  energy  of  his  commonwealth,  on  the 
strong  heart  which  was  able  to  bear  up  through 
such  a  fearful  trial,  and  to  win  back  again  the  pro 
vinces  which  had  been  lopped  away. 

It  is  surely  high  time  for  this  abiding  soreness 
on  a  point  of  past  history  to  pass  away.  There 
has  been  disruption ;  but  it  has  been  followed  by 
reconstruction.  The  one  process  implies  the 
other;  without  disruption,  there  could  have  been 
no  need  for  reconstruction.  It  is  best  to  say  as 


HECONSTR  UCTION,  287 

little   as   possible  about   the    disputes    of    twenty 
years   back.     The    discussion    has    no    longer   any 
practical  use,  and  it  is  plain  that  the  time  has  not 
yet   come  for    discussing   such  points  in  a  purely 
historical     spirit.      I    should    myself     have     been 
inclined  to  say  nothing  about  them,   had    I   not, 
long  after  I  took  my  pen  in  hand,  found  myself 
made   the   subject   of    a    charge    as    amazing    as 
it   is   untrue.     It  is   a   pity  to  tear  open  wounds 
which  are  fast  healing.     As  far  as  I  could  make 
out,   the   South   is    getting  reconciled    to    its  lot 
quite  as  speedily  as  could  be   looked  for.      It  is 
admitted    that   the    restoration    of    slavery    is    as 
little  to  be  wished  for  as  it  is  to  be  hoped  for. 
The  women   and  the  clergy  are  understood  to  be 
less  ready  to  accept  the  new  order  of  things  than 
the  male  laity ;  but  it  is  to  be  supposed  that  they 
too  will  come  round  in  course  of  time.     Things 
are  taming  down;  the  negro,  though  no  longer  a 
slave,  is  falling  back  into  his  natural  place.     The 
Congress    of     the   Union    contains   Senators   and 
Representatives     who    once    fought    against    the 
Union.     The  former  Yice-President    of  the  Con 
federate  States  held,  while  I  was  in  America,  a 
prominent  place  among  them.     It  is  surely  high 
time,  not  to  forget  the  past,  which  cannot  be,  but 
to  put  out  of  sight  its  needless  visible  memorials. 


288  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

It  is  unpleasant  to  see,  in  this  and  that  collection, 
specially  in  the  capitol  at  Albany,  some  kinds  of 
trophies  exhibited  which  would  hardly  be  in  per 
fect  taste,  even  if  they  had  been  won  from  a  foreign 
enemy.  If 

Bella  geri  placuit  nullos  habitura  triumphos, 

there  are  some  spoils  of  victory  which  might  as 
well  be  kept  out  of  sight.  I  confess  that  it  gave 
me  a  turn  to  see,  among  honest  memorials  of  the 
War  of  Independence,  among  memorials  of  other 
kinds  of  the  great  men  of  the  Union,  little 
personal  relics  of  fallen  soldiers  of  the  South.  The 
miniature  of  a  lady  taken  from  the  body  of  a  slain 
Confederate  officer  is  hardly  as  yet  an  object  for 
the  public  gaze. 

I  have  spoken  somewhat  freely;  but  it  is  only 
towards  printed  matter  that  I  have  had  any  need  to 
use  freedom.  My  personal  reception  everywhere 
was  as  kind  and  friendly  as  any  reception  could  be. 
And  I  believe  that  I  am  right  in  judging  of  the 
rational  class  of  the  American  people  by  that  recep 
tion,  far  more  than  by  their  newspapers.  Not  that 
I  would  have  it  thought  for  a  moment  that  I  have 
any  serious  ground  to  complain  of  the  American 
press  as  a  whole.  Some  strange  things  have  been 


A   TALE  OF  BOTH  HEMISPHERES.          289 

said  of  me,  and  one  very  false  and  unpleasant  thing ; 
but  I  have  had  many  pleasant  things  said  of  me  also 
and  amusing  things  without  end.  I  have  no  wish 
to  dwell  on  any  personal  matter  save  so  far  as  to 
make  my  answer  to  one  very  hateful  charge ;  but, 
in  giving  my  impressions  of  the  United  States,  I 
could  not  wrell  help  saying  how  I  had  been  im 
pressed,  both  in  a  general  and  in  a  personal  way, 
by  a  thing  which  fills  so  important  a  place  in  the 
United  States  as  its  newspaper  press. 

And,  once  more  to  fall  back  on  my  old  doctrine 
of  the  common  heritage  of  the  two  severed 
branches  of  the  English  folk,  let  me  end  by  saying 
that  they  have  something  like  a  common  mythology. 
Some  of  those  stories  which  go  about  the  world 
with  blanks  for  the  names  have  shown  themselves 
both  in  England  and  in  America,  and  have  had  the 
blanks  filled  up  with  different  names  in  the  two 
countries.  I  used  to  hear  a  story  in  England,  which 
in  England  was  quartered  at  Manchester.  There 
was  during  the  great  war  with  France  a  clergyman 
of  the  collegiate  church  who  was  a  zealot  in  loyalty. 
A  child  was  brought  to  him  to  be  christened,  and 
the  parents  or  sponsors  wished  to  give  the  babe  the 
startling  name  of  "  Napoleon  Boneyparty"  (I  spell 
the  last  word  as  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt 


290  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

that  it  was  sounded ;  the  Tuscan  surname  kept  its 
four  syllables  for  a  long  time  within  my  memory). 
"  None  of  your  Jacobin  names  here,"  cries  the 
patriotic  priest ;  "  George,  I  baptize  thee."  I  go  to 
New  England  ;  I  there  hear  how  a  child  was  brought 
to  be  christened  by  a  minister  who  was  at  least 
equally  zealous  on  what,  by  a  kind  of  analogy,  may 
be  called  the  same  side  of  the  question.  "  Name 
this  child  ;"  "  Thomas  Jefferson."  The  clergyman, 
yet  fiercer  than  his  Manchester  brother,  cries  out, 
"  I  can't  give  him  the  name  of  the  devil ;  John 
Adams,  I  baptize  thee."  The  story  is  so  good  that 
it  would  be  a  pity  if  either  side  of  the  Ocean  should 
set  up  any  exclusive  claim  to  it.  Let  both  waive 
all  pretensions  to  "  originality,"  and  let  the  tale 
abide  as  a  common  possession  of  the  English  folk. 

To  clothe  the  same  thought  once  more  in  a  graver 
shape,  what  I  have  done  in  this  present  attempt  has 
been  to  put  on  record  some  of  my  chief  impressions 
on  the  most  striking  points  which  come  home  to  a 
traveller  in  the  great  English  land  beyond  the 
Ocean.  I  naturally  look  at  things  from  my  own 
point  of  view ;  let  others  look  at  them  and  speak  of 
them  from  theirs.  To  me  the  past  history  and 
present  condition  of  the  United  States  is,  before  all 
things,  a  part  of  the  general  history  of  the  Teutonic 


PAST  AND  FUTURE  OF  THE   UNION.      291 

race,  and  specially  of  its  English  branch.  Of  that 
history  the  destiny  of  the  American  commonwealths, 
as  far  as  it  has  already  been  worked  out,  forms  no 
unimportant  part.  And  their  future  destiny  is  un 
doubtedly  the  greatest  problem  in  the  long  story  of 
our  race.  The  union  on  American  soil  of  so  much 
that  is  new  and  so  much  that  is  old,  above  all  the 
unwitting  preservation  in  the  new  land  of  so  much 
that  is  really  of  the  hoariest  antiquity  in  the  older 
world — the  transfer  of  an  old  people  with  old  insti 
tutions  to  an  altogether  new  world,  and  that  practi 
cally  a  boundless  world — supply  subjects  for  specu 
lation  deeper  perhaps  than  any  earlier  stage  of  the 
history  of  our  race  could  have  supplied.  Like  all 
other  human  institutions,  the  political  and  social 
condition  of  the  United  States  has  its  fair  and  its 
dark  side ;  the  Union,  like  all  other  human  com 
munities,  must  look  for  its  trials,  its  nps  and  downs, 
in  the  course  of  its  historic  life.  It  has  indeed  had 
its  full  share  of  them  already.  The  other  members  of 
the  great  family  may  well  be  proud  that  the  newest, 
and  in  extent  the  vastest,  among  the  independent 
settlements  of  their  race,  has  borne,  as  it  has  borne, 
a  strain  as  hard  as  any  community  of  men  was  ever 
called  on  to  go  through.  And  we  of  the  mother 
land  may  watch  with  special  interest  the  fortunes  of 
that  branch  of  our  own  people  on  whom  so  great  a 


292  IMPRESSIONS  OF  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

calling  has  been  laid.  Truly  we  may  rejoice  that, 
with  so  much  to  draw  them  in  other  ways,  that 
great  people  still  remains  in  all  essential  points  an 
English  people,  more  English  very  often  than  they 
themselves  know,  more  English,  it  may  be,  some 
times  than  the  kinsfolk  whom  they  left  behind  in 
their  older  home. 


THE    END. 


INDEX. 


INDEX. 


Administration,  how  to  obtain 
purity  of,  123;  prevalence 
of  corruption  in,  124. 

Advertising,  American  deve- 
lopement  of,  100. 

Albany,  situation  of,  245;  cap- 
itol  at,  245,  247,  248,249,288. 

America,  likeness  and  uulike- 
ness  between  England  and, 
1  to  49;  languages  in,  50 
to  91 ;  law  and  government 
of  States  and  cities  in,  91  to 
107;  politics  and  govern 
ment  of  States  and  cities 
in,  107  to  159;  ecclesiastical 
matters  in,  159  to  179; 
learning  and  literature  in, 
179  to  200;  society  and 
modes  of  life  in,  200  to  231; 
travel  in,  231  to  245;  archi 
tecture  in,  245  to  251 ;  news 
papers  in,  251  to  267;  criti- 
cism  of  author  in,  267  to 
289. 

Anglo-Saxon,  use  and  misuse 
of  name,  25,  26. 

Ancient,  house  in  Farming- 
ton,  Connecticut,  222,  223; 
distinction  between  old  and, 
223,  224. 

Animal  life,  disappointed  not 
to  see  more  of,  226,  227. 

Antiquity,  lack  of,  in 
churches,  161 ;  shifting 
standards  of,  161;  lacking, 
throughout  United  States, 
241,  242,  243. 


Architecture,  religious,  160; 
in  America,  245  to  251;  style 
of,  appropriate  to  United 
States,  246;  of  churches, 
246;  of  civil  buildings,  246, 
247;  of  capitol  at  Albany, 
245,  247,  248,  249,  288;  of 
New  York  City,  247,  248; 
of  Philadelphia,  247,  248; 
hope  for  national,  249. 

Author,  desire  of,  to  escape 
writing  impressions,  1,  2; 
inability  of,  to  draw  picture 
of  American  things,  2; 
many  aspects  of  American 
life  of  no  interest  to,  3; 
kindness  received  in  Ame 
rica  by,  4,  288;  cultivated 
Americans  not  likely  to  be 
offended  with,  5;  personal 
experience  of  press  by,  259, 
260,  261,  262,  263;  defence 
of,  against  newspaper 
charges,  269  to  289 ;  refuta 
tion  of  charge  of  "scorn 
ful  ridicule"  by,  271,  272, 
274,  278,  279,  281 ;  position 
of,  in  regard  to  civil  war, 
272;  his  literary  work  on 
subject  of  civil  war,  279, 
280,  281;  his  objectionable 
expression,  "disruption  of 
United  States,"  284,  285, 
286. 

Authorities,  original,  value 
and  general  ignorance  of, 
184,  185,  187,  188. 


296 


INDEX. 


Books,  difficulty  of  obtaining, 
in  America,  187;  Gerniaii, 
mass  of,  187. 

Bosses,  the  rule  of,  129,  130, 
131;  meaning  of  name,  158; 
importance  of  Irish,  158. 

British,  opinion,  importance 
of,  in  America,  6,  7;  opin 
ion,  sensitiveness  to,  in 
America,  7;  opinion,  odd 
ways  of  showing  yearning 
for,  8,  9;  possible  reason 
and  date  of  substitution  of 
name  "English"  for,  27,  28, 
270 ;  hardly  expected  to  be 
conversant  with  some 
American  matters,  43,  44; 
Museum  MSS.,  186,  187; 
point  of  view  in  civil  war, 
274  to  279. 

Briton,  use  of  word,  29. 

Car,  railroad,  60,  61. 

Carriages,  railroad,  60,  61; 
hackney,  high  fares,  229, 
230. 

Centre,  intellectual  and  social, 
in  America,  218;  compari 
son  between  France  and 
America  in  this  respect,  219; 
of  England,  London,  214, 
216,  218,  256;  no  national, 
in  America,  256;  Washing 
ton  not  a,  217;  New  York 
not  a,  216,  217. 

Centralization,  tendency  to, 
111;  danger  of,  111,  112. 

Chester,  city  of,  243. 

Chicago,  city  of,  245. 

Chinese,  under  consideration 
of  Federal  Legislature,  153; 
bills,  153;  distinction  be 
tween  Indians,  negroes,  and, 
154;  comparison  between 
Jews  in  Russia  and  Chinese 
in  America,  154;  control  of 
European  newspaper  press, 
possible  effect,  155;  anti-, 
riots  in  America,  155;  ques- 


Ohinese — (Continued), 
tion    outside    of    America, 
155. 

Churches,    Roman    Catholic, 
160;   lack   of  antiquity  in, 
161;   indiscriminate  use  of 
word,  162;  ideas  suggested 
by  interior  of,  164;  Baptist, 
in   Brooklyn,  164,  165;  ar 
rangement  of,  165,  166,  167; 
at  Newport,  165,  166;  talk 
ing    in,   167;    in   Virginia, 
171;  Episcopal  the  fashion 
able,   173,  174;  State,  176, 
177;  architecture,  160,  246. 
City,  likeness  of  English  and 
American,    11;    history  of 
word,   64;    distinction    be 
tween   town    and,    64,    65; 
power  of    mayor  in,   122, 
123;  election  of  mayor  of 
English,    129;    election    in 
Philadelphia,  129,  130,  131, 
132;  no  central,  in  America, 
215;  contrast  of  small  town 
with  great,  220;  of  Chester, 
243;   position  of  American 
cities,   244,   245;    law   and 
government  of,  in  America, 
91  to  107;  politics  and  go 
vernment   of,  in   America, 
107  to  159. 

Citizenship,  indiscriminate 
bestowal  of,  impossible, 
158;  mean  standard  of,  pos 
sible,  159. 

Civil  War.  touchiness  concern 
ing,  268;  author's  position 
in  regard  to,  272;  Northern 
expectations  during,  277, 
278,  279;  time  for  calm  dis 
cussion  of,  not  come,  287; 
trophies  of,  288. 
Clergymen,  use  of  word,  162; 

position  of,  175,  176. 
Colleges,  number  of,  179,  180; 
power  of  granting  degrees, 
180;  advantage  of  inferior, 
181 ;     Federal     power     in 


INDEX. 


297 


Colleges — (Continued), 
relation  to,  180,  181;  ten 
dency  to  mediocrity  in, 
182,  libraries,  185;  Har 
vard,  Yale,  Cornell,  188, 
189,  191,  192,  194,  195; 
Vassar,  Wellesley,  189, 190; 
founders  of,  190,  191;  re 
strictions  of  Girard,  191; 
ancient  system  of,  192,  193; 
Oxford  and  Cambridge, 
system  of,  192;  comparison 
of,  and  universities  with 
Union  and  States,  192,  193; 
president,  title  for  head  of, 
193 ;  class  names  and  phrases 
in,  194,  195;  no  distinctive 
dress  in,  196. 

Colouies,proximity  of  depen 
dent,  influence  on  United 
States,  23,  24;  ties  between 
mother-land  and,  49;  ten 
dencies  of,  to  go  ahead  and 
to  stand  still,  53;  contrast 
ing  tendencies  of,  illustrated 
in  speech,  59,  60;  reproduce 
some  forms  of  English  life, 
199. 

Colour,  distinction  of,  144,153. 
Commonwealth,      American, 
part  of  English  folk,    15; 
study  of,  234,  235;  Ameri 
can,  future  destiny  of,  291. 
Confederate,      misinterpreta 
tion  of  word,  279,  280,  281, 
282. 

Congress,  procedure  of,  dif 
ferent  from  that  of  English 
Parliament,  119;  President's 
Ministry  debarred  from,  119. 
Constitution —  Constitutional, 
amendments,  power  of 
making,  112;  secession  doc 
trine  of  rights,  113;  Ameri 
can  written  and  British  un 
written,  comparison  be 
tween,  116,  134;  adoption 
of  two  houses  in  legislative 
body,  116;  British  and 


Constitution — (Continued). 
American,  inference  drawn 
from  similarity  of,  135; 
amendments  powerless  to 
equalize  race  andcolour,  153 ; 
founders  of,  and  leaders  of 
French  Revolution,  com 
parison  between,  284;  en 
durance  of,  284. 

Cornell,  University,  men  of 
learning  at,  188;  good  work 
done  at,  189;  theology  at, 
191,  192. 

orruption,  source  of,  in 
America,  125;  not  a  matter 
of  course,  127;  electoral, 
differs  in  America  and 
England,  128;  combination 
against,  in  Philadelphia,  1 30, 
181;  in  New  York  City, 
249,  250,  251. 

Country,  life,  not  desirable  in 
America,  213  to  216;  yearn 
ing  for  old,  244. 

County,  preferred  to  Shire  in 
America,  78;  English,  geo- 

fraphical  comparison  with 
tates,  232,  233. 

Court,  temporal,  jurisdiction 
of,  in  ecclesiastical  matters, 
177,  179. 

Criticism,  of  author  in  Ameri 
ca,  267  to  289. 

Democrat,  distinction  be 
tween  Republican  and,  not 
plain,  108,  109. 

Democratic,  feeling,  defini 
tion  of,  104;  government, 
weakness  in,  130. 

Dialect,  American  speech  not 
a,  56;  in  Virginia,  peculiari 
ties  of,  78;  negro,  150. 

Ecclesiastical,  matters,  in 
America,  159  to  179. 

Election — Elective  judges,  in 
America,  123,  124;  bribery 
and  corruption,  in  America 
and  England,  128;  muni- 


298 


INDEX. 


Election— (Continued), 
cipal,  relative  importance  in 
America  and  England,  132. 

England,  likeness  and  unlike- 
ness  between  America  and, 
1  to  49. 

English,  use  of  name,  analogy 
with  use  of  name  "  Greek," 
25, 26 ;  name,  substitution  of, 
for  "British,"  28;  tongue, 
writers  in,  really  English 
men,  80,  31;  stock  predomi 
nant  in  United  States,  35, 
36,  37,  39;  brotherhood  with 
Americans,  39;  intonation, 
42;  language  in  America, 
50  to  91 ;  law,  91 ;  America 
essentially,  138;  feeling  du 
ring  Civil  War,  in  America, 
274  to  279. 

English  folk,  American  com 
monwealths  part  of,  15; 
ties  of  blood  and  speech  be 
tween,  16;  accidental  sepa 
ration  of,  16;  true  unity  of, 
16,  17,  18,  19;  influences  of 
speech  on  separation  of,  24, 
33;  should  be  bound  to 
gether  as  Hellenic  folk,  24, 
25;  idea  that  people  of 
United  States  have  lost 
right  to  be  looked  on  as, 
33,  34;  settlement  of,  in 
Britain  and  America,  48; 
common  heritage  of,  93; 
two  branches  of,  Irish  ques 
tion  common  to,  158;  my 
thology  of,  common  heri 
tage,  289;  Americans  are, 
292. 

Europe,  advice  to  Americans 
about  to  travel  in,  41 ;  Ame 
rican  feeling  on  first  visit 
to,  243. 

Farmington,  Connecticut,  old 
house  in,  222,  223. 

Federal,  system,  mystery  to 
English,  42,  43 ;  power,  dan 
ger  of  extension,  111;  cen- 


Federal— (Continued), 
tralization,  tendency  to, 
lll,112;word,displacement 
of,  by  "National, "114, 115, 
116;  system,  State  legisla 
tures  distinctive  feature  of, 
119;  form  of  government 
not  responsible  for  corrup 
tion,  124;  Legislature  deals 
with  question  of  Civil  Ser 
vice  Reform,  126;  Legisla 
ture  and  Chinese  question, 
153;  power  in  relation  to 
colleges  and  universities, 
180, 181 ;  system  responsible 
for  divorce  between  society 
and  politics,  culture  and 
politics,  202,  203,  204;  Go 
vernment's  right  to  use  force 
against  single  States,  272, 
273,  274;  government,  feel 
ings  of  scientific  student  of, 
279;  body,  splitting  of,  a  cu 
rious  study,  279 ;  word,  Eng 
lish  misinterpretation  of, 
279,  280. 

Foreigner,  use  of  word,  be 
tween  English  and  Ameri 
can,  19,  20;  influx  of,  as 
serted  influence,  34. 

French,  settlements  in  Ame 
rica,  36,  37;  use  of,  ending 
mile,  76. 

Fredonia,  name  proposed  for 
United  States,  32,  33. 

Garfield,  avengers,  102;  death 
of,  Mason's  attempt  to 
avenge,  103;  and  Civil  Ser 
vice  Reform,  126;  country 
affected  by  death  of,  127. 

Geography,  mutual  ignorance 
of  English  and  Americans, 
46,  47. 

Government,  of  States  and 
cities  in  America,  91  to  159; 
startling  action  of,  107, 108; 
weakness  in  Democratic, 
130. 


INDEX. 


299 


Great  Britain,  theoretical 
chance  of  coloured  Lord 
Chancellor  in,  156;  bar 
barian  subjects  of,  156,  157. 

Greek,  analogy  between  use 
of  word  ' '  English"  and,  25, 
26;  history  parallel  with 
New  England,  197,  198. 

Guiteau,  trial  of,  94;  criticism 
of  judge  in  trial  of,  96,  97; 
indictment  of,  97;  argument 
of  insanity  of,  98. 

Harvard,  College,  180;  men  of 
learning  at,  188;  competes 
with  Yale,  188,  189;  domi 
nant  theology  at,  191;  com 
mencement  at,  196; 

Heredity,  introduction  of 
principle  of,  impossible  in 
United  States,  136,  137. 

History,  tendency  of  Ameri 
cans  to  forget  their  early, 
44;  teaching  of,  in  schools, 
defective,  45;  of  three  Eng- 
lands,  48 ;  historical  nomen 
clature,  71,  72;  value  of 
original  authorities  in,  184, 
185,  186,  187,  188;  local 
American,  study  of,  196, 
197,  199,  200;  parallels  in, 
197,  198;  study  of,  at  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  199, 
200;  American,  author 
charged  with  ignorance  of, 
262. 

Hotel,  American,  237,  238; 
clerks,  237,  238;  status  of 
guests  in,  238;  tendency  to 
live  in,  239. 

Independence,  war  of,  feeling 
arising  from,  21,  22;  war  of, 
influence  in  snapping  ties, 
22,  23;  war  of,  names  used, 
27,  28;  war  of,  churches 
previous  to,  161. 

Indians,  called  "dark  Ameri 
cans,"  151;  school  at  Car- 


Indians — (Continued), 
lisle,  151 ;  possible  elevation 
of,  151 ;  preferred  to  negro, 
151;  pride  of  whites  in  de 
scent  from,  152;  personal 
appearance  of,  152;  at  Sche- 
nectady,  152,  153;  distinc 
tion  between  Chinese,  ne 
groes  and,  154. 

Intonation,  English,  42,  85, 
86. 

Inventions,  modern,  political 
advantage  of,  235,  236. 

Ireland — Iris*h,  comparisons 
between  England,  America, 
and,  12  to  14;  vote,  139, 
142;  Home  Rule,  140;  ele 
ment  mischievous  in  Eng 
lish  lands,  140;  element 
bad  in  American  politics, 
141;  English  misrule  in, 
142;  assimilation  of,  142, 
143;  question,  importance 
of,  to  English  folk,  158; 
"bosses,"  158;  intrusion, 
signs  of,  in  churches,  160; 
ascendancy,  streets  of  New 
York  a  protest  against, 
228;  bondage  in  hack  fare, 
231. 

Jurisprudence — Justice,  cen 
tralization  of,  92;  conserva 
tism  of  American,  94;  essen 
tial  principles  of  English, 
found  in  States,  94;  adminis 
tration  of,  in  rural  districts, 
98,  99;  in  Virginia,  99;  of 
peace,  99,  100,  101. 

Language,  in  America,  50  to 
91;  community  of,  49,  50; 
follows  law  of  colonies,  52, 
53;  of  railroads,  60,  61; 
abuse  and  corruption  of, 
67,  68;  slang  in,  67,  68; 
printer  and  schoolmaster 
foes  to,  87,  88;  no  real  dif 
ference  of,  91. 


300 


IXDEX. 


Law,  likeness  of  English  and 
American,  10,  11,  13,  14; 
and  government  of  States 
and  cities,  91  to  107;  Eng 
lish  decisions,  respect  for, 
93;  courts,  no  outward  dis 
play  in,  93;  criminal,  in 
Maryland,  95;  courts,  judge 
and  jury  in  Massachusetts, 
95 ;  of  States,  95 ;  respect  of 
people  for,  101;  peculiar 
breaches  of,  1'>3;  breaches 
of,  analyzed,  104;  people 
source  of,  104;  weakness  in 
administration  of,  105,  106; 
Lynch,  106;  difficulty  in  en 
forcing,  107;  temporal,  su 
preme  in  ecclesiastical  mat 
ters,  177. 

Lawyers,  importance  of,  in 
America,  91 ;  both  barrister 
and  solicitor,  91 ;  classes  of, 
in  England,  92;  recognize 
common  heritage,  93;  tie 
between  English  and  Ame 
rican,  92,  96. 

Lent,  observed  in  society,  174. 

Life,  value  of,  in  America,  106, 
107;  and  society  in  America, 
200  to  231 ;  American,  cen 
tres  in  towns,  212  to  218; 
animal,  in  America,  226, 
227;  level  of,  represented 
by  newspapers,  252,  253. 

Lincoln,  name,  74;  canoniza 
tion  of,  268. 

London,  as  centre  of  England, 
214,  216,  218,  256;  unlike 
New  York,  216,  217;  news- 
papers  in,  217,  218,  219, 
255,  256;  books  published 
in,  219. 

Magistrate,  importance  of, 
101;  comparison  of,  with 
proctor  of  English  univer 
sity,  101. 

Majority,  power  of,  in  States, 
113.  * 


Mob  violence,  no  excuse  for, 
155. 

Name,  common,  desirability 
of,  for  common  stock,  25; 
Anglo-Saxon,  use  of,  25, 
26;  Greek,  English,  analo 
gy  in  use,  25,  26;  Ameri 
can,  Englishman,  opposi 
tion  of,  26,  27;  use  of,  in 
War  of  Independence,  27, 
28;  change  of,  in  America, 
29;  United  States  lacks  lo 
cal,  31,  32,  33;  first  for 
Christian,  use  of,  65;  of 
places,  71;  historical,  71, 
72;  signification  of,  politi 
cal  and  religious,  72;  Phila 
delphia,  Washington,  73, 
74;  of  towns,  old  and  new, 
74;  classical,  for  cities,  76, 
77;  approach  to  fitness  in, 
77,  78. 

Nation — National,  analysis  of 
weakness  of  old  and  young, 
7,  8;  purity  of  blood  found 
in  none,  35;  substitution 
of,  for  Federal,  114,  115, 
116;  right  to  rid  itself  of 
nuisances,  154;  method  of 
dealing  with  nuisance,  154. 

Negro,  vote,  139;  assimilation 
of,  impossible,  143,  144;  in 
equality  of,  1 44,  145,  146; 
disposition  of,  146;  slavery, 
abolition  of,  146;  equality, 
root  of  question,  147;  Presi 
dent,  constitutionally  pos 
sible,  147;  Western  and 
Southern,  sentiment  for, 
148;  distinction  between 
white  servants  and,  148, 149; 
speech,  dialect,  150;  joyous- 
ness,  disappearance  of,  151; 
prefers  Indian  to,  151 ;  form 
of  Christianity,  developed 
by,  171 ;  places  of  worship, 
171 ;  service  in  Baltimore, 
171;  Episcopalians,  172, 173. 


INDEX. 


301 


New  England,  rule  of  town 
ships  in,  99;  regret  not 
to  see  town-meeting  in,  134; 
history,  parallel  with  old 
Greece  and  mediaeval  Swit 
zerland,  197,  198;  revives 
certain  forms  of  Teutonic 
life,  198,199;  town-meeting, 
revival  of  Teutonic  Assem 
bly,  198,  200;  inhabitants 
of,  fly  westward,  223. 

Newspapers,  of  New  York 
and  London,  217,  218,  219; 
level  of  life  represented  by, 
252,  253,  257,  258;  daily 
and  weekly,  252,  258,  259; 
personalities  in  daily,  253, 
254,  256,  257;  society,  252, 
253 ;  "  Tribune, "  254 ;"  Her 
ald,"  254;  London,  charac 
ter  of,  255,  256;  New  York, 
national  character  of,  256; 
effect  of  wide-spread  edu 
cation  on,  257,  258;  out 
ward  appearance  of,  257, 

258,  259;    author's  experi 
ence  of  and  criticism  by, 

259,  260,    261,    262,    263; 
interviewer,  264,   265,  266, 
267;       author's       defence 
against  charges  of,  267  to 
289;  importance  of,  in  Uni 
ted  States,  289. 

New  York,  Dutch  stock  in, 
36;  State  legislature,  "  dead 
lock"  in,  120,  121  ;^  State, 
governor's  prerogative  of 
mercy,  122 ;  State  and  City, 
elective  judges,  124;  soci 
ety,  201;  not  a  centre  like 
London,  216,  217;  newspa 
pers,  217,  218,  219;  dirty 
streets  of,  228;  architecture 
in,  247;  City  Hall,  248; 
City,  corruption  in,  249, 
250,  251;  City  and  State, 
possible  divorce  between, 
250,  251;  "Tribune,"  254; 
"Herald,"  254;  newspa- 


New  York— (Continued), 
pers,     national    character, 
256;  newspaper   interview 
ers,  267. 

North — Northern,  doctrine  of 
State  rights,  113;  danger 
of  doctrine,  114;  sympathy 
with,  during  civil  war, 
274;  expectation  of  Eng 
lish  sympathy,  277,  278; 
complaint  against  English 
governing  classes,  270,  277. 

Office,   lovfe  of,  in  America, 

125,  126. 
Original,  authorities,  value  of, 

184,    185,    187,   188;  desire 

of  Americans  to  be  thought, 

283,  284. 

Past,  nearness  of,  in  young 
country,  23;  deep  roots  in 
America  of  remote,  38. 

Philadelphia,  position,  245; 
architecture  in,  247;  muni 
cipal  election  in,  129,  130, 
131. 

Political  —  Politician  —  Poli 
tics,  and  government  of 
States  and  cities,  107  to 
159;  parties  undistinguish- 
able,  108;  settling  of  intel 
ligible  questions,  109;  old 
distinctions  of  party  not 
now  uppermost,  110;  cor 
ruption,  127;  discreditable 
meaning  of  words,  127; 
Irish  element  in,  140,  141, 
142;  divorce  between  soci 
ety  and,  202;  advantage  of 
modern  inventions  in,  235, 
236. 

Post-office,  illustrates  colonial 
tendency  to  stand  still,  228, 
229 ;  arrangements  of,  229. 

President,  Ministry  of,  de 
barred  from  Congress,  119: 
negro,  constitutionally  pos. 
sible,  147;  Garfield  and 


302 


INDEX. 


President — (Continued). 
Civil  Service  Reform,  126; 
Garfield,  death  of,  102, 103, 
127;  power  of,  122,  123; 
Arthur  and  Chinese  bills, 
153;  of  universities,  193; 
message  of,  rapidly  tele 
graphed,  236 ;  Lincoln, 
canonization  of,  268. 

Pronunciation,  English  and 
American,  no  noticeable 
difference  between,  78; 
principle  in,  78,  79;  usage 
in,  according  to  analogy  of 
English  touiruc,  79,  80;  of 
e  before  r,  bl,  82,  83,  84; 
of  last  letter  of  alphabet,  84; 
twang  in,  80,  87. 

Race — Races,  assimilation  of, 
in  Roman  Dominion,  144, 
145 ;  coloured,  distinc 
tion  in,  149;  constitutional 
amendments  cannot  equal 
ize,  153;  distinction  be 
tween,  154;  question  of,  in 
British  Empire  and  in  Uni 
ted  States,  156,  157;  law  of 
religion  and,  171;  inferior, 
advantages  of,  in  Virginia, 
225. 

Reader,  English  and  Ameri 
can,  184;  general,  in  Ame 
rica,  185. 

Reform,  Civil  Service,  126; 
railroad,  suggested,  236, 237. 

Religion — Religious,  equality 
in,  160,  162;  architecture, 
160;  follows  race,  160; 
bodies,  good  feeling  be 
tween,  174;  doctrine  and 
discipline,  177,  178. 

Representatives,  House  of, 
comparison  with  House  of 
Commons,  117;  House  of, 
manner  of  electing,  118; 
House  of,  behaviour,  118. 

Republic  —  Republican,  can 
there  be  treason  against? 


Republic — (Continued). 
105;  responsible  ministry 
incompatible  with,  idea, 
121,  122;  party,  branches 
of,  108,  109;  simplicity  in 
ceremonial  and  dress,  204, 
205. 

Rings,  combination  against, 
129,  130,  131. 

Roads,  rail,  60,  61;  bad,  in 
America,  227;  228;  rail,  re 
forms  suggested,  236,  237. 

Roman,  citizenship,  stran 
gers  admitted  to,  144; 
Senate,  constitution  of,  145, 
146. 

Scholar,  professed,  in  Ameri 
ca,  185. 

Scotland,  comparisons  be 
tween  England,  America, 
and,  10,  11,  12,  15,  49,  50. 

Secession,  doctrine  of  rights, 
113;  question  in,  113;  for 
merly  rebellion,  272;  feeling 
for  and  against,  in  South, 
275. 

Senate,  comparison  with 
House  of  Lords,  117;  man 
ner  of  electing,  118;  be 
haviour  of,  118;  Roman, 
constitution  of,  145,  146. 

Society,  Lent  in  fashionable, 
174;  and  manner  of  life  in 
America,  200,  231;  phrases 
in  New  York,  201 ;  dinners 
and  receptions  in,  201,  202; 
divorce  between  politics 
and,  202;  ceremony  in 
public  and  private,  204, 
205;  private  precedence  in, 
211;  papers,  252,  253. 

South,  speech  in,  56,  57;  feel 
ing  for  and  against  seces 
sion,  in,  275. 

Speech,  old  and  modern  usage 
in,  54;  standard  of,  in  Great 
Britain,  55;  American,  not 
a  dialect,  56;  different 


INDEX. 


303 


Speech— (Contin  ued). 
forms  of,  in  Northern  and 
Southern  States,  56;  differ 
ence  in,  characteristic  marks 
of  57;  local  usage  in,  57,  58, 
59,  to  65;  neither  English 
nor  American  usage  in  it 
self  better  or  worse,  66; 
Virginia,  dialectic  differ 
ence  in,  78;  American,  not 
necessarily  corruption,  90; 
circumstances  responsible 
for  usages  in,  90;  negro, 
150. 

Spelling,  omission  of  letters 
in,  88,  89. 

Spoils,  system,  what  it  is, 
what  it  does,  what  results 
from  it,  125,  126. 

State,  laws  differ  in,  95; 
Federal  power  in,  and 
rights,  111 ;  sovereign, 
what  constitutes,  112;  grant 
to  Union  from,  112;  power 
of  majority  of,  113;  rights, 
Northern  doctrine  of,  113, 
114;  legislatures,  119,  120; 
governors  of,  121,  122, 
123;  relation  of  city  to,  132; 
Church  and,  176,  177;  geo 
graphical  and  political  com 
parison  with  English  coun 
ties,  232,  233,  234;  size  of, 
234;  rebel! ion  of,  272;  ques- 
of  force,  272,  273,  274. 

Switzerland,  compared  with 
Dutch  and  French  settle 
ments  in  America,  37,  38; 
New  England  history  com 
pared  with  that  of,  197, 
198. 

Teutonic,  words,  scorn  of  end 
ings  in  America,  75;  land 
better  without  Irish  or  ne 
gro  vote,  139;  life,  New 
England  reproduces  ancient 
forms  of,  198,  199,  200; 
race  in  history,  290,  291. 


Titles,  use  of,  in  America,  205, 
206,  207,  208,  209;  in  Eng 
land,  206,  209;  in  Germany, 
210;  applied  to  women, 
210,  211. 

Towns,  nomenclature  of,  74; 
rule  of,  in  New  England, 
99;  meeting,  in  New  Eng 
land,  134;  American  love 
for  life  in,  212,  213,  214, 
215,  216,  217,  218;  life  on 
continent  of  Europe,  220; 
appearance  of  small,  222, 

ooo 
-o^o. 

Travel,  in  America,  231  to  245; 
vast  distances  in,  231,  232, 
233,  234;  small  peculiari 
ties  of,  236 ;  companions  of, 
237;  pleasure  in,  240;  no 
historical  interest  in,  240. 

Union,  terms  of,  112;  grants 
from  States  to,  112;  and 
British  Empire,  274,  275; 
Englishmen  no  feeling  for, 
275,  276;  exalted  idea  of 
birth  of,  282;  disruption 
and  reconstruction  of,  284, 
285,  286;  American,  com 
pared  with  Achaian,  286; 
American,  survives  terrible 
strain,  291. 

Unity,  of  English  folk,  16, 
17,  18,  19. 

Universities,  number  of,  179, 
180;  power  of  granting  de 
grees  at,  180;  Harvard, 
Yale,  180,  188,  189;  Fede 
ral  power  in  relation  to,  180, 
181 ;  tendency  to  mediocri 
ty  in,  183;  libraries  in,  183; 
and  colleges,  compared 
with  Union  and  States, 
192,  193;  title  of  head  of, 
193;  no  distinctive  garb, 
196;  Harvard,  commence 
ment  at,  195,  196;  Johns 
Hopkins,  study  of  local 
history  at,  199,  200. 


304 


INDEX. 


Virginia,  administration  of 
justice  in,  99;  inhabitants 
compared  with  those  of 
Laish,  100;  county  in,  im 
portance  of,  99;  churches 
in,  171;  old  civilization  in, 
224;  inferior  race  in,  225; 
simplicity  of  life  in,  225; 
meagre  population,  226; 
bad  roads  in,  227. 

Washington,  not  a  central 
city,  217;  Smithsonian  In 
stitution  in,  240;  position 
of,  244,  245. 

Wilde,  Mr.  Oscar,  265. 

Words,  foreigner,  use  of,  19, 
20;  American,  curious  limi 
tations  of,  30,  31,  32; 
Scotch,  52 ;  bairn,  fall ;  rail 
road,  carriage,  car,  station, 
depot,  60,  61;  shop,  store, 
corn,  wheat,  62,  63;  town- 
lot,  city-lot,  block,  63,  64; 
city,  town,  metropolis,  65; 
preference  for  fine,  66;  cer- 


Words — (Continued), 
tainly,  believe,  like,  loan, 
rent,  guess,  reckon,  calcu 
late,  68,  69;  endorse,  70; 
county,  shire,  78;  "  ampus- 
sy  and/'  85;  printers'  way 
of  dividing,  89;  nothing, 
knowledge,  wedlock,  89; 
government,  ministry,  114; 
federal,  national,  114,  115, 
116;  church,  clergyman, 
162;  meeting-house,  chapel, 
church,  minister,  priest, 
pastor,  parson,  162,  163; 
survival  of  Sir,  205,  206; 
professor,  doctor,  colonel, 
judge,  207,  208,  209;  hotel, 
inn,  238;  disruption,  re 
construction,  285,  286. 

Yale,  College,  180;  men  of 
learning  at,  188;  competes 
with  Harvard,  188,  189; 
dominant  theology  at,  191; 
form  at,  196. 


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